Quote:
Originally Posted by swanson719
This is what I don't understand. Everyone in this country is given a chance to go to high school, and college is affordable if you look hard enough. So why don't people go to college and get a job that pays well enough they don't need to be poor?
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Because not everyone has the opportunity to do that. A child growing up in extreme poverty doesn't have the same social and economic capital that a child growing up in middle class America has. They live in a culture of poverty. Their parents probably work long hours or several jobs to support themselves, their schools are crappy, their neighborhoods dangerous. As demonstrated in the article, they don't even have access to adequate nutrition--inner cities are often called food deserts for a reason. What real chance to do kids have with no support network whatsoever to succeed?
Yes, you can go to high school. But if you attend a highschool where the textbook are 25 years old, has aging technology and inadequate funding for upgrades, how is that a real "opportunity?". It is definitely not the same high school that you or I probably went too.
Can't attend college without money. If you went to a crappy highschool, you probably didn't have help applying for colleges or learning how to go after scholarships. So you need to take a loan. Who is going to give you one? Your parents probably aren't credit worthy, and you certainly wouldn't be either.
What this article highlights is that there are a lot of things that affect poor people that don't necessarily factor into middle and upper class lifestyles and choices. Things we can't even consider because we don't have a clue.