Youth Rendering 1 - Youth Poverty

Child Workers from a Coal Mine. 19th Century

While this rendering is from the 19th century, the message of the image is pretty clear. During the 19th century, these children were forced to work in mine shafts, mining coal and other minerals for large corporations, in a futile attempt to lift themselves up from their poverty stricken lives. 

In our modern day, while children and adolescents no longer work in coal mines or in depraved conditions, the issue of adolescents growing up in impoverished situations remains. In 2008 alone, roughly 14 million children in America live in families that are living below the poverty line (Murry 114). For all the progression and advances that were made in the 20th and 21st centuries, that is an alarmingly large number of children that still remain below the poverty level. However, as Murry notes, one key difference in impoverished families in the 19th and early 20th century and the present day, is that African-American and Latino adolescents have higher odds of residing in impoverished neighborhoods than white youth do (Murry 114).While in the previous century the issues of adolescent poverty was more the concern of employers and governments, in the present day this has shifted to educators and school boards as the primary vehicle for helping students from impoverished neighborhoods succeed. 

In our modern schools, in order to combat neighborhood poverty and to combat the negative effects of it (such as lower than average marks, higher drop out rates) educators must make changes at classroom and school levels in order to be more inclusive of all students, and bridge the gap between the rich and poor, in terms of access to materials and learning (with one method being having laptops to give out to all students for in class assignments). Secondly, after school programs and events that allows students regardless of their economic status to participate is a great way to involve students from impoverished areas, since it makes them spend less time with the negative influences that come from impoverished neighborhoods. Lastly, in terms of academia, schools need to end the process of streaming students into particular academic levels of study (ie academic, applied, locally developed math) based on their race or gender, a problem which has been happening in schools since the 19th century. With work and implementation of solutions such as these, it would help reduce the levels of poverty among adolescents and youth.

Works Citied

Mcbride-Murry, V. (2011) “Neighborhood Poverty and Adolescent Development.” Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21(1), 114-128