A nice idea, but my experience working with poor kids has led me to believe lack of access to resources is not the biggest issue these kids face. The biggest issue is lack of good parents.
My next door neighbor is 11 years old. He has basically dropped out of middle school. Even before covid-19 he was constantly truant. Now that school has moved to online, he doesn't attend at all. His math teacher e-mailed me (I had previously contacted her to get a copy of his curriculum) and asked if he had access to a computer and WiFi because he hadn't attended a single online Zoom session. I assured her he did as I could hear him playing Fortnite all hours of the night. He often comes over for snacks at 10 pm. I ask whether he's had dinner and he claims his mom doesn't make dinner until 12 or 1 am. I ask what time he goes to bed and he replies "7 or 8 am". I've tried to motivate him to do Khan Academy courses for rewards, but his mom always undermines me. For example, I promised to buy him a Dragonball Z game if he completed the 6th grade math module on exponents. Half-way through the course he announced his mom bought him the game and he lost all motivation to continue. Even money doesn't seem to have much effect unless there is something he currently wants to buy. This happens every time though - his mom doesn't encourage school at all. She can't help him because (I'm pretty sure) she dropped out herself. There's no dad in the picture, and any motivation I try to use to get him to learn stuff gets instantly gratified by his mom.
So basically, we have this kid with an inverted sleep schedule who is years behind his peers, has access to everything he needs to be successful, except parents who care about his future, and thus he is on a trajectory to fail.
> A nice idea, but my experience working with poor kids has led me to believe lack of access to resources is not the biggest issue these kids face. The biggest issue is lack of good parents.
Very nearly everyone in, around, or who has even remotely studied the field knows that social context (which includes but is not limited to parents) is the biggest issue for these kids in general. That's not even remotely controversial.
But, aside from the fact that most of that is outside of the scope of school district authority to address, the WiFi busses aren't even in theory about fixing their general long-term issues, but are to mitigate the degree to which the gap gets worse as schools temporarily switch to online instruction due to COVID-19. The second-hand article currently linked as the main one for HN doesn't make this explicit, but the one that it links as it's source does: https://www.routefifty.com/tech-data/2020/05/buses-wifi-broa...
As another anecdote, my wife grew up in a poor housing estate in central Scotland, in a household with bad parents and some domestic violence. There was a fair bit of violence and drugs in the area too.
Almost everyone in the area was claiming at least some kind of benefit, and benefit fraud was absolutely rife.
I got to know the extended family quite well over time. Almost every parent seemed determined to continue the cycle of poverty, and pushed their children to sign up for a council house as soon as they were 16. Fraudulent tactics were often used to get their kids further up the waiting list, or to get their kids into newer/better housing once they had a house. One father set fire to his daughter's house with the hope she'd be moved into a better house. Another smashed in the windows of his son's house, so they could claim he was in danger from imaginary drug dealers in the area.
My wife (and indeed her brother) were however determined to get a decent education and do better, in spite of their parents.
She applied to university, but her mother hid the acceptance letter and tried to push her into a crappy low/paid job and a council house.
Thankfully my wife came across the letter my chance, and her life has been very different from that of her parents.
If Bob and Ted start at the same point, and Bob becomes more successful than Ted, Ted will try to undermine Bob's success. The reason is Ted blames circumstance for his failure, and Bob's success makes it hard for Ted to blame circumstance. By undermining Bob's success, Ted can comfortably continue to blame circumstance.
I have a book suggestion for you if you are interested in learning more about this. I grew up in Scotland and I am very familiar with what you are talking about.
Feel free to not respond as this might be too personal, but I'm very interested. Does your wife keep in contact with her mother? Presumably yes, as you have gotten to know them?
Conversely, there are also poor people that still care about education and use what they have to push their kids to succeed.
In the late 1990s, I lived near an apartment block with many Vietnamese immigrants who were poor (worked at min. wage or below in asian restaurants for crazy long hours), knew very little English, and they had almost no stuff since they arrived with a few suitcases. Despite this, most of their kids ended up graduating, and those who got scholarships went to community college or state college and those that couldn’t got jobs to support their families. These kids had few resources, but they had a work ethic. They had a lot of responsibility from a young age.
The neighbors of those kids whose parents were poor and already Americans (raised here) - those kids turned out more like your neighbor. Zero motivation, zero responsibility, parents gave such little of a shit about everything, dropped out of school, and held random min. wage jobs in brief spurts until they would get fired for no-showing.
Idk...it was such a jarring contrast to see. Both groups started poor from the same place, yet one group turned themselves into something and the other group just already gave up without even trying.
I think there is a strong selection among the immigrant group. People immigrate because they want a better life for themselves and their kids, and are willing to work for that.
There was a study a while ago that found a correlation between book ownership in a child’s house and educational achievement. So some municipality (can’t remember which) kickstarted a program to mail a few age appropriate books to kids in their per month.
The result was no change. It turned out that the actual cause wasn’t books, it was parents who would value books enough to purchase them. Buying books for children whose parents hadn’t valued reading and education enough to already own some books didn’t help at all.
I have to admit that this sounded apocryphal to me because it’s an almost-too-convenient illustration of a general point, but a quick search at least turned up the original study:
As with most things in life, it’s a multi-layered problem. Mass media tends to simplify the issue to a single headline that’s usually along the lines of “we can fix everything if we solve X!” because that gets you clicks. Everyone wants to believe that there’s a magic bullet to solve Y.
Taking your experience, you’ve run into a different layer of the issue. If you’ve heard about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs[1], then you might recognize this as being an issue at the psychological level (esteem needs). It sounds like this child has their basic needs already met (not poor). So your anecdote provides a useful data point but doesn’t disprove the need to solve for the problem of basic needs.
A lot of people are trying to tackle the resource need simply because it would have the largest visible impact. However, it would be really nice if the media acknowledged that the problem isn’t so simple and that this is just step 0.
The wifi provides an opportunity for someone outside of the home to "babysit" the kids. In can provide improvement at the margin, if managed well.
Also, people have greed that can be exploited. If you want to continue your (admirable!) effort you can offer a different bribe.
Another point to note is that if the kid got halfway through the chapter on exponents, he's doing pretty well! Failure at math education means years behind, not weeks behind.
from this brief blurb, I find myself wondering whether the mom is deliberately thwarting your efforts. your actions essentially imply that she isn't doing a good job parenting. probably true, but she may resent that signal. you've already gone above and beyond your duty as a neighbor, but have you tried talking to the mom directly?
I don't think she's doing it maliciously, I think she is just easily guilted/convinced to buy her kids stuff when they want it (she also has a daughter older than the son who always has the latest iPhone, so it's not unique to the boy). They don't have much money (they are on both SNAP and HOC), but enough for short term luxuries like smartphones and video/computer games.
> have you tried talking to the mom directly?
I have not talked to her directly, though I'm starting to come to the same conclusion that it is necessary if I want to help her son. I'm slightly apprehensive that it might be a touchy subject though and I'm not the best at confrontation.
> A nice idea, but my experience working with poor kids has led me to believe lack of access to resources is not the biggest issue these kids face. The biggest issue is lack of good parents.
That's an important point, not made often enough.
Still. The school district can't replace parents, but they can provide WiFi.
I agree that poor role models and bad influences negatively affect kids, whether poor or not. However, from my wife’s experience teaching at Title I schools, many of these kids DO have the motivation to do well in their classes.
What is glaringly apparent to teachers at these schools is the inequity due to lack of resources (poor parents and poor school funding). Many of these kids do not have access to internet, do not have access to computers, and rely on their schools to provide them with regular meals.
Parents are not the only important part of the equation here.
At least his mom is not selling his donated clothes for pill money.
I have a friend that works as a teacher at a Title I school, and some of the students they try to help (clean clothes and shoes that fit), the parent will take the donated clothing and literally sell it for money.
Not to critique your selfless efforts too much, but try to instill an intrinsic love of learning in him. Developing an extrinsic motivation for learning ( a video game) is likely to back fire
I've tried, it's really hard though. At one point I started reading him a chapter from Harry Potter per day in the hope it would get him hooked on reading like it did for me. Well, it did get him hooked on the story, but since his reading skills were so low he would never read on his own so instead he begged his mom to rent the movies, and he promptly binge watched all 8 movies and proudly announced all the spoilers he knew. He also wasn't interested in hearing me read to him from Harry Potter anymore after that despite me hinting that the books were far superior to the movies.
And the flip side of this is that if you have really dedicated parents then they can often overcome huge amounts (although not unbounded amounts) of privation to help their children succeed. I had a Vietnamese cleaning lady who would bring her kid with her to clean my house. While she cleaned she would be asking him math questions from a sheet of paper she had in her shirt with the answers. She’d read out something like “73 times 27” and the kid would get working on it and he would have to do it until he got it right. No treats or video games or money offered.
I guess if it works for them, they see no reason to change. Free housing, food, money for the luxuries they want, what more could someone ask for? The 'successful' people work themselves to death and stress out to gain some things that are a bit nicer, but not enough to justify all the bother.
WiFi is an essential utility in 2020. When we shut down schools for Covid19 and scaled up from 7 to 11 grade levels of students using Chromebooks at home that was a major struggle for some families. It’s apparent that a number of families -esp. those with younger kids (new Chromebook recipients) or free/reduced status live in a “digital desert”. Subsidized housing /trailer parks here don’t have WiFi. For many of these families paying rent and putting food on the table is a major struggle. Busses are a creative option but we don’t have a good “unlimited data” provider for hotspots. One hotspot loaned out had 130GB of use for the month. It was used for two students and 6 additional family members.
The choice to sat “WiFi” rather than “internet” made me pause too, but in this case I think it is appropriate. If you only have access to a cheap laptop or tablet, a wired or cellular connection on its own won’t help you get to the information you need. WiFi is now the lowest common denominator of internet access, and that’s worth recognizing.
I need to bookmark this for the June county broadband task force meeting. A point was raised at the last meeting that building a WISP may be the least impractical step forward to fill coverage gaps. With our local government budgets being slashed beyond survivable levels right now any effort would have to be by private finance alone incrementally. Difficulty funding due to COVID-19 even minimal policing and fire services puts broadband at a lower priority in officials minds right now.
This is a great idea!! We need to give these poor and low-income urban and rural students as much opportunity to "get connected" as we can. There are many thousands of gifted students out there whose potential is untapped, and I think this is a great opportunity to accelerate education and foster growth.
This, too, would help with the learn-to-code movement (a skills gap that I consider essential to close). This could have far-reaching effects and do wonders to lift the next generation of poor out of poverty and into more lucrative white collar jobs.
It is a great idea, but it's also a testament to the sorry state of our nation's internet infrastructure caused by telecoms that are free both from competition and from being regulated as the essential utilities they are (the latter thanks to Ajit Pai's cronyist FCC).
Maybe you can find solace in the fact that Germany, which allegedly breathes engineering, suffers from much the same fate. The internet in the large cities is good (not great, but good), in the smaller cities it's a mixed bag, but largely okay, and in the rural parts it's usually a joke.
It appears that it is not an issue that's unique to the US, but common in the "old" Western democracies. Friends tell me it's not much different in rural Spain and France.
I think expenditures such as these, aimed directly at enabling community members to be more equal in terms of their ability to participate in the modern world and give themself a hand up are fantastic.
Bring more of these types of tax expenditures IMO.
Though unlike electricity, it's going to be increasingly practical to deliver decent internet speeds via cellular and satellite. So I'm not sure that pushing wired connections to every individual house is the best approach at this point.
In my experience implementing online learning in higher education in Peru showed that for most poor families wi-fi time is gold, no matter the context/situation. Student would connect as soon as they get into campus and work on things for her mother, father, uncles etc. From banking to social services, to buying things that are not available in local stores (mostly gifts or kids' toys). Work is done for family in between classes when time permits. I'm not surprised that kids at any age do the same (at school or in a bus) elsewhere.
Seeing this, along with another top-level comment that what kids really lack is good parents, approaches for what broadly looks like "poverty" need to be different in developed vs. developing countries. People are poor for different reasons.
Controversial opinion but I think stopping poor irresponsible people from becoming parents is a better solution because
A. It requires less resources for the society.
B. It is better for the kid to not exist than to end up with a miserable life. Crime statistics for poor dysfunctional households doesn't look good.
C. Overpopulation is a problem. Even if you can feed 12 billion people, at what cost. And you can already feed that many. The problem is often political and societal (stopping food waste can solve global hunger). If someone can suggest a solution, I am all ears.
D. Lower population will lead to better reforms and more attention or investment per kid. It will be easier to move forward policies and test things. Democracy won't be a bottleneck but will work for once.
The Guardian had a very interesting series on literacy in the UK. There was a paragraph about a teacher,who asked each kid to bring one book from home. One girl brought an Argos catalog.When explained by the teacher that it's not a book,the girl told the teacher that this was the only one she could find at home. These kids have no chances if the parents are like this and most likely is the biggest hurdle as opposed to the lack ofWifi or any other issue.
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My next door neighbor is 11 years old. He has basically dropped out of middle school. Even before covid-19 he was constantly truant. Now that school has moved to online, he doesn't attend at all. His math teacher e-mailed me (I had previously contacted her to get a copy of his curriculum) and asked if he had access to a computer and WiFi because he hadn't attended a single online Zoom session. I assured her he did as I could hear him playing Fortnite all hours of the night. He often comes over for snacks at 10 pm. I ask whether he's had dinner and he claims his mom doesn't make dinner until 12 or 1 am. I ask what time he goes to bed and he replies "7 or 8 am". I've tried to motivate him to do Khan Academy courses for rewards, but his mom always undermines me. For example, I promised to buy him a Dragonball Z game if he completed the 6th grade math module on exponents. Half-way through the course he announced his mom bought him the game and he lost all motivation to continue. Even money doesn't seem to have much effect unless there is something he currently wants to buy. This happens every time though - his mom doesn't encourage school at all. She can't help him because (I'm pretty sure) she dropped out herself. There's no dad in the picture, and any motivation I try to use to get him to learn stuff gets instantly gratified by his mom.
So basically, we have this kid with an inverted sleep schedule who is years behind his peers, has access to everything he needs to be successful, except parents who care about his future, and thus he is on a trajectory to fail.
Very nearly everyone in, around, or who has even remotely studied the field knows that social context (which includes but is not limited to parents) is the biggest issue for these kids in general. That's not even remotely controversial.
But, aside from the fact that most of that is outside of the scope of school district authority to address, the WiFi busses aren't even in theory about fixing their general long-term issues, but are to mitigate the degree to which the gap gets worse as schools temporarily switch to online instruction due to COVID-19. The second-hand article currently linked as the main one for HN doesn't make this explicit, but the one that it links as it's source does: https://www.routefifty.com/tech-data/2020/05/buses-wifi-broa...
As another anecdote, my wife grew up in a poor housing estate in central Scotland, in a household with bad parents and some domestic violence. There was a fair bit of violence and drugs in the area too.
Almost everyone in the area was claiming at least some kind of benefit, and benefit fraud was absolutely rife.
I got to know the extended family quite well over time. Almost every parent seemed determined to continue the cycle of poverty, and pushed their children to sign up for a council house as soon as they were 16. Fraudulent tactics were often used to get their kids further up the waiting list, or to get their kids into newer/better housing once they had a house. One father set fire to his daughter's house with the hope she'd be moved into a better house. Another smashed in the windows of his son's house, so they could claim he was in danger from imaginary drug dealers in the area.
My wife (and indeed her brother) were however determined to get a decent education and do better, in spite of their parents.
She applied to university, but her mother hid the acceptance letter and tried to push her into a crappy low/paid job and a council house.
Thankfully my wife came across the letter my chance, and her life has been very different from that of her parents.
If Bob and Ted start at the same point, and Bob becomes more successful than Ted, Ted will try to undermine Bob's success. The reason is Ted blames circumstance for his failure, and Bob's success makes it hard for Ted to blame circumstance. By undermining Bob's success, Ted can comfortably continue to blame circumstance.
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Bottom-Worldview-Makes-Underclas...
Conversely, there are also poor people that still care about education and use what they have to push their kids to succeed.
In the late 1990s, I lived near an apartment block with many Vietnamese immigrants who were poor (worked at min. wage or below in asian restaurants for crazy long hours), knew very little English, and they had almost no stuff since they arrived with a few suitcases. Despite this, most of their kids ended up graduating, and those who got scholarships went to community college or state college and those that couldn’t got jobs to support their families. These kids had few resources, but they had a work ethic. They had a lot of responsibility from a young age.
The neighbors of those kids whose parents were poor and already Americans (raised here) - those kids turned out more like your neighbor. Zero motivation, zero responsibility, parents gave such little of a shit about everything, dropped out of school, and held random min. wage jobs in brief spurts until they would get fired for no-showing.
Idk...it was such a jarring contrast to see. Both groups started poor from the same place, yet one group turned themselves into something and the other group just already gave up without even trying.
This is barely the third generation since the civil rights act was implemented, and social change takes far longer than that.
The result was no change. It turned out that the actual cause wasn’t books, it was parents who would value books enough to purchase them. Buying books for children whose parents hadn’t valued reading and education enough to already own some books didn’t help at all.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100520213116.h...
Taking your experience, you’ve run into a different layer of the issue. If you’ve heard about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs[1], then you might recognize this as being an issue at the psychological level (esteem needs). It sounds like this child has their basic needs already met (not poor). So your anecdote provides a useful data point but doesn’t disprove the need to solve for the problem of basic needs.
A lot of people are trying to tackle the resource need simply because it would have the largest visible impact. However, it would be really nice if the media acknowledged that the problem isn’t so simple and that this is just step 0.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
Also, people have greed that can be exploited. If you want to continue your (admirable!) effort you can offer a different bribe.
Another point to note is that if the kid got halfway through the chapter on exponents, he's doing pretty well! Failure at math education means years behind, not weeks behind.
> have you tried talking to the mom directly?
I have not talked to her directly, though I'm starting to come to the same conclusion that it is necessary if I want to help her son. I'm slightly apprehensive that it might be a touchy subject though and I'm not the best at confrontation.
That's an important point, not made often enough.
Still. The school district can't replace parents, but they can provide WiFi.
What is glaringly apparent to teachers at these schools is the inequity due to lack of resources (poor parents and poor school funding). Many of these kids do not have access to internet, do not have access to computers, and rely on their schools to provide them with regular meals.
Parents are not the only important part of the equation here.
Let's put it this way
1) motivated parents with poor school funding = most likely success
2) unmotivated parents with great school funding = demonstratably bad outcome
I have a friend that works as a teacher at a Title I school, and some of the students they try to help (clean clothes and shoes that fit), the parent will take the donated clothing and literally sell it for money.
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This, too, would help with the learn-to-code movement (a skills gap that I consider essential to close). This could have far-reaching effects and do wonders to lift the next generation of poor out of poverty and into more lucrative white collar jobs.
It appears that it is not an issue that's unique to the US, but common in the "old" Western democracies. Friends tell me it's not much different in rural Spain and France.
Bring more of these types of tax expenditures IMO.
A. It requires less resources for the society.
B. It is better for the kid to not exist than to end up with a miserable life. Crime statistics for poor dysfunctional households doesn't look good.
C. Overpopulation is a problem. Even if you can feed 12 billion people, at what cost. And you can already feed that many. The problem is often political and societal (stopping food waste can solve global hunger). If someone can suggest a solution, I am all ears.
D. Lower population will lead to better reforms and more attention or investment per kid. It will be easier to move forward policies and test things. Democracy won't be a bottleneck but will work for once.