The culture of poverty: It’s a reality for people everywhere in the world. Where it is often the most heart-wrenching is when it is seen in the face of a child.Dr. David Hough, dean of the College of Education at Missouri State University, talks about this topic.
Audio File
An interview with Hough
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The front-line employees that face this culture head on are often young professionals themselves. These public school teachers, who may have a degree that the ink hasn’t had time to dry, are asked to recognize basic needs of children and identify community resources that could be of value to a family.
What does it mean that a home environment isn’t supportive of education? Hough says that it manifests itself in many ways: Even if a family believes quality education is important, their priorities are placed on scrounging to meet basic needs. This places lower priority on providing oversight to their children’s educational experiences.
After researching the intersection of education and poverty for a number of years, he’s come up with few answers on how to fight it. So, in his weekly News-Leader column, he posed the question to his readers: How do we reverse the cycle or change the trajectory for these kids? His readers provided some insightful answers - that would also require great amounts of funding.
