SOCIAL JUSTICE MAN is Here!
Last week I had the pleasure of listening to a talk by Dr. P.L. Thomas, an Associate Professor at Furman University and author of Ignoring Poverty In the U.S.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Education. Dr. Thomas had much to say about the problems that childhood poverty causes in the United States in regards to education. For example, while many European countries that we compare ourselves to with the almighty test score have childhood poverty rates below 10%, the United States has a poverty rate of over 23%. That’s right, 23% of our children live in poverty. We shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to Finland 5%, the U.K. 12% or Japan 14%, because we are closer to the industrialized powerhouses of Latvia 19% and Romania 25%.
According to Dr. Thomas:
“The central problems we are facing in schools are historical patterns(emphasis in original) – student achievement being strongly correlated with out-of school factors, such as poverty; disproportionate drop-out rates among marginalized populations of