The Working Poor: Invisible in America

The chapter opens in the poor neighborhood of Anacostia in Washington, D.C. where elementary school children dream of becoming doctors and lawyers and helping their families. However, these same children often struggle with the rigors of study and have behavioral problems: 

“Children can be trapped in corrosive relationships between home and school” (234).As they act out in class to desperately compensate for the attention they miss at home or following the example of jaded parents, the children inadvertently dismiss the whole enterprise of getting an education. Some parents react aggressively themselves, threatening teachers when they question why their child is absent or behaving in an abnormal way. Sometimes lack of parental support is more passive, when parents are unable to meet teachers after school because they cannot get the time off work.

Teachers do their best to bridge the divide between the school and the parents, sometimes making extraordinary involvements in the community, as in the case of the Teach for America program, where participants have dinner with the children’s families and hand out their personal numbers.

However, children often arrive in school in an unfit state to receive an education. Sometimes they are hungry or cannot afford the eyeglasses they need to see the board.