Opportunity
06/05/15 05:20
Earlier this week our local newspaper had a story about Shaina Johnson, a student at Black Hills State University who grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation. She was recently awarded a summer internship with the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. It is clear that this gifted student has exceptional abilities and has already achieved a great deal in her life. Her high school and college careers have been academically brilliant and she has demonstrated an incredible ability to overcome obstacles and accomplish big tasks. At college she is majoring in biology and minoring in chemistry and plans to attend medical school upon graduation.
One of the reasons that the paper ran the article is that Johnson is defying the stereotypes that many have of reservation youth. She was raised by her grandmother in a traditional Lakota home. She is fluent in Lakota and learned the Lakota values of courage, generosity, respect, wisdom and fortitude from her earliest years. Although she never knew her father, she had a very strong family to support and nurture her. Her grandmother emphasized education from her earliest years.
One of the reasons we are so attracted to these stories is that they are exceptional. There are hundreds and thousands of stories of the oppressive effects of generational poverty on the Reservations. Violence, addiction, unemployment and despair are all too common among our neighbors land there are plenty of academically brilliant students who fail to achieve even modest goals in college.
Entrenched and systematic racism is part of the problem. Those of us who grew up privileged are often unaware of how significant that privilege has been in our lives. We like to think of racism as something of the past - belonging to other places and other people and often are blind to the oppression that arises from our own attitudes and prejudices.
Even more difficult to see than racism, however, is classism. Increasingly, our country is a classed society with layers of privilege and poverty created by great disparity in income. It isn’t always easy to see entrenched poverty.
We like to think that the great equalizer in our society is education. Those who become educated have more options for their lives and a greater opportunity to overcome poverty and become upwardly mobile. We are less likely to think about how much more difficult it is for students of modest means to achieve their academic dreams.
It is simply harder for a student to succeed academically when that student has to work 50 hours a week at a job in order to make rent and groceries. It is harder for a student to succeed when there is no money for books or the technology that is assumed by the institution.
Some may find it hard to believe, but poverty is a major barrier to success for some academically brilliant students. Prestigious universities such as Columbia, Brown, Stanford and Yale all have scholarship programs that allow impoverished students to get their tuition paid if they succeed in a very competitive application process. But getting into a university is only part of the struggle. Only 11% of students who come from poverty and are accepted into top tier colleges are able to graduate.
It is hard to imagine that a student at a university with a multi-billion dollar endowment would have to go multiple days without food, or sleep on the streets, or sell their body in order to stay alive. All four of the above-named universities now have Facebook pages that enable students living in poverty to connect with one another. The anonymous posts tell stories of students who face incredible challenges just to stay alive. One student simply could not afford any textbooks at the university bookstore. The same student had never had access to a library and didn’t know that the books were available at the library until he was already significantly behind in all of his classes. A dedicated professor discovered the lack of books and helped the student to discover how to use the library. This challenge overcome, grades improved, but having to do all of his studying at the library was time consuming and forced the student to cut back on work hours. Among his posts on the Columbia website: “Ive eaten enough meals out of dumpsters to know that squirrels and rats often get stuck in there.”
I had several part time jobs during my academic career, but never had to fight hungry squirrels and rats to get a meal.
I understand why the newspaper likes to run feel good stories about exceptional students who achieve great successes in the face of great odds. I like to read the articles. Those students are inspirational not only to others who grow up in difficult surroundings - they are inspirational to the rest of us as well. But for every student like Shaina Johnson, there are a hundred who drop out of high school or college and never achieve their dreams. They don’t land the prestigious internships and wouldn’t be able to travel and support themselves if they received such awards. They might work twice as hard as a student from a privileged background and still not succeed living far away from home with little or no support for the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter.
Our society has treated education as a commodity that is bought and sold on the open market. And one thing about capitalism - it loves a shortage. It is the simple rule of supply and demand. Short supply means high prices. it also means that there are many who want the commodity who are unable to afford it. There simply aren’t enough places in our universities for all of the academically brilliant students. There aren’t enough openings in medical schools to meet the demand for physicians, forcing the United States to be a net importer of doctors.
Maybe it is time to set aside the big profits and increase the supply of educational opportunities. It isn’t like we couldn’t afford it if we wanted to do it.
How I wish Shaina Johnson’s story was about the majority instead of a single exception.
One of the reasons that the paper ran the article is that Johnson is defying the stereotypes that many have of reservation youth. She was raised by her grandmother in a traditional Lakota home. She is fluent in Lakota and learned the Lakota values of courage, generosity, respect, wisdom and fortitude from her earliest years. Although she never knew her father, she had a very strong family to support and nurture her. Her grandmother emphasized education from her earliest years.
One of the reasons we are so attracted to these stories is that they are exceptional. There are hundreds and thousands of stories of the oppressive effects of generational poverty on the Reservations. Violence, addiction, unemployment and despair are all too common among our neighbors land there are plenty of academically brilliant students who fail to achieve even modest goals in college.
Entrenched and systematic racism is part of the problem. Those of us who grew up privileged are often unaware of how significant that privilege has been in our lives. We like to think of racism as something of the past - belonging to other places and other people and often are blind to the oppression that arises from our own attitudes and prejudices.
Even more difficult to see than racism, however, is classism. Increasingly, our country is a classed society with layers of privilege and poverty created by great disparity in income. It isn’t always easy to see entrenched poverty.
We like to think that the great equalizer in our society is education. Those who become educated have more options for their lives and a greater opportunity to overcome poverty and become upwardly mobile. We are less likely to think about how much more difficult it is for students of modest means to achieve their academic dreams.
It is simply harder for a student to succeed academically when that student has to work 50 hours a week at a job in order to make rent and groceries. It is harder for a student to succeed when there is no money for books or the technology that is assumed by the institution.
Some may find it hard to believe, but poverty is a major barrier to success for some academically brilliant students. Prestigious universities such as Columbia, Brown, Stanford and Yale all have scholarship programs that allow impoverished students to get their tuition paid if they succeed in a very competitive application process. But getting into a university is only part of the struggle. Only 11% of students who come from poverty and are accepted into top tier colleges are able to graduate.
It is hard to imagine that a student at a university with a multi-billion dollar endowment would have to go multiple days without food, or sleep on the streets, or sell their body in order to stay alive. All four of the above-named universities now have Facebook pages that enable students living in poverty to connect with one another. The anonymous posts tell stories of students who face incredible challenges just to stay alive. One student simply could not afford any textbooks at the university bookstore. The same student had never had access to a library and didn’t know that the books were available at the library until he was already significantly behind in all of his classes. A dedicated professor discovered the lack of books and helped the student to discover how to use the library. This challenge overcome, grades improved, but having to do all of his studying at the library was time consuming and forced the student to cut back on work hours. Among his posts on the Columbia website: “Ive eaten enough meals out of dumpsters to know that squirrels and rats often get stuck in there.”
I had several part time jobs during my academic career, but never had to fight hungry squirrels and rats to get a meal.
I understand why the newspaper likes to run feel good stories about exceptional students who achieve great successes in the face of great odds. I like to read the articles. Those students are inspirational not only to others who grow up in difficult surroundings - they are inspirational to the rest of us as well. But for every student like Shaina Johnson, there are a hundred who drop out of high school or college and never achieve their dreams. They don’t land the prestigious internships and wouldn’t be able to travel and support themselves if they received such awards. They might work twice as hard as a student from a privileged background and still not succeed living far away from home with little or no support for the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter.
Our society has treated education as a commodity that is bought and sold on the open market. And one thing about capitalism - it loves a shortage. It is the simple rule of supply and demand. Short supply means high prices. it also means that there are many who want the commodity who are unable to afford it. There simply aren’t enough places in our universities for all of the academically brilliant students. There aren’t enough openings in medical schools to meet the demand for physicians, forcing the United States to be a net importer of doctors.
Maybe it is time to set aside the big profits and increase the supply of educational opportunities. It isn’t like we couldn’t afford it if we wanted to do it.
How I wish Shaina Johnson’s story was about the majority instead of a single exception.