Those That Have, Get

Within general folk wisdom it's always been acknowledged that children born within a privileged social-economic group have a leg-up in their future; those children born to a milieu of want and deprivation are generally destined to look forward to a future of more of the same. When my own children were entering the public school system 45 years ago, and we represented the bottom rung of the middle-class, there were public meetings arranged by the local school board to apprise parents of educators' acknowledgement of these facts and conveying to them that the board meant to level the field for children.

Of course even within the sub-groupings of socio-economic levels there are anomalies, where a set of parents living on impossibly low wages still have the intellectual wherewithal and values to point their children unerringly in the right direction, teaching them to make the most of opportunities, indeed to make their own opportunities, and to settle for nothing less. That's a minority option for most families living on low incomes.

Canadians have always exercised their social consciences, and even when I was a very young child I was aware that there were intra- and inter-school programmes whereby children from truly disadvantaged families would be offered a place within the school itself out of hours where they were taught to practise good hygiene, and were given nutritious breakfasts to start off their day. It's no surprise that hungry children will be unable to perform academically.

And while my parents certainly qualified as being representative of the working poor when I was young, I was never included among that group of have-nots whom society recognized as needing a leg up, for I never went hungry and books were my early 'toy's. The disequilibrium of options and opportunities between those children coming from disadvantaged backgrounds as opposed to those from comfortable family situations continues, despite society's awareness of the unevenness of opportunities and the consequential dashing of aspirations.

The classic example of how children's early exposure to everything that society can promise its young is severely compromised by their families' lack of social and economic advancement is exemplified by a 60-year-old study undertaken in England where 7-year-old boys and girls from a variety of social/cultural/economic backgrounds were solicited for this social experiment in upbringing and potential. The children were filmed and interviewed, their inborn personalities, details about their families' fortunes and lifestyles classified and noted.

At seven-year intervals the children were further filmed and interviewed, invited to express their opinions on a variety of topics, including their aspirations for their futures, their interests in what they perceived happening around them, their perceptions about school and their futures. These children took well to the interview processes, they responded casually, naturally, with some aplomb as children are wont to do, and with an almost universal confidence in themselves and the futures they had already mapped out in their minds for themselves.

As the children grew and matured and experienced more of life's puzzling contradictions or, as the case would have it for the more happily endowed, opportunities, their responses became more thoughtful, some of the earlier ebullience in leaner evidence, or as the case may be, were more confirmed in the comfort of their trajectory toward success in life mirroring that of their assured and professional parents. Later, as they developed and matured, some of the children grappled with complications like depression, drug dependency, while others bloomed, excelling at school, at sports, at social relations.

There was a clear and definite demarcation between those children representing the upper class with all the potential available to them through social connections, through a superior environment, through confident expectations of success and those children whose meagre social support left them emotionally adrift, confused and falling far short of their own plans for their future when they were very young and still full of hope.

We continue to fail children, for society is able to do so much and no more. As long as families live in social and economic deprivation their children will continue to experience early disappointments, never be able to catch up academically, always be part of society's disaffected, vulnerable to illicit and anti-social behaviours. The poverty-and-welfare syndrome appears ready to continue unabated with all the societal-detrimental fall-out that results from it.

With the best of intentions, we seem to be remote from ever successfully accomplishing our obligations to all the young of our society. What a dreadful waste.