"Around here its called an M.R.S. degree." Love that Dianavan!

Yes Dianavan, education, about birth control, drug & alcohol abuse, about health care

& Yes Mg, teach these poor folk life skills, like how to cook a healty meal & sow their own clothes
Show them how to fish.

Whose gonna teach them, that ended in the 70's there is no more money to teach/educate/help poor people.

Poor folks, really poor folks don't have the time for an education, their time is eating up by living, by surviving.
Their kids at 16 are usually out the door trying to make it in their own world because their parents world of being so poor can no longer support them, they are in some cases trying to help support the family where they came from or trying to make it easier on their siblings.

There's a reason why poor kids don't finish high school & it's criminal they they don't/can't. Offer what ever you'd like but until society decides that they're a worthwhile investment, it's not gonna change. And the kids that are impared in one form or another have no hope, they eventually are the make up of our homeless.

The reason college education is being mentioned so much here is we know there's a connection between breaking the poverty glass wall & being educated is the way but that's only the visible leap, the last step in the breaking of the barrier. You get a poor kid through college & they've made it, they're in a bright new world, theyve written history. You've better odds at herding cats or bringing horses to water to drink. You get a poor kid TO college & you're witnessing a blessing.

From when they open their eyes & realize that's not a fur coat around their necks their dreams get shattered. Pre natal care wasn't part of the program & neither will any follow up heath care for life. Child care is pretty much a bartered favor with neighbors , so there goes any pre-schooling or any child rearing education for the parent(s). Because one job doesn't cut it the "kid gets left behind" longer than what's exceptable but they're between a rock & a very hard place & usually under-the-table jobs & under full time employment has no benies so there goes any sick time (that's enough to make a poor folk choke) vacation or holiday pay, it's just unhealthy if someone gets sick. So let's move in with your best friend's family so the rental costs can get cut or rent out some one's room, that's for poor teenagers without kids, (how long can an adult see that as a future) not for their poor folks who are already cramped into a hovel that cost 3X it's worth but they can't manage a house of their own because, well you know the system is against them even though it'd be cheaper for them if they did own. Well, one bad illness would wipe it all out anyway, so.
Well if they did have a spot of land at least someone could teach the to grow a crop, let me see you beat a rat to a root or beat the neighbor to a plant that's old enough to be harvested. Do you see the odds that start to mount, are the pattens starting to show & they're not even off the garden path yet.

Scroll back up to the song above & disect it

It's a "life with no hope" & hope is where you need to start, without it the rest doesn't mean squat.

They live under the gun at every turn of there life, you try to function under those conditions! Can you say PTS

Poor folks you'll find that their "language is foreign, the culture is strange" & so far there's only a few here as far as I can see that have an idea of what being really poor is like.
It's like inmagining you're in a war only you weren't

You don't get it!!!

Some people when they get raped or beaten they don't even go outside again & when they have to they're reliving the fear again & again & again. That fear is the same for anyone that fights to survive day after day after day! My wife used to ask me how come you never get nervous about anyting. I still sit in resturants with my face towards the door. I did finally make it to college after I got a GED & then it was nite school & then I never could get any loans, grants or funds to finish & I was one of the luckier few, I did get to start & run my own construction company but I always had the brains I was more of a survivor than a lot of others, though I don't know why.

I'm not trying to pull rank here & say that you can't imagine unless you were poor too. I'm just trying to give a better insite into the life that many think is so easy to work out of. Some do but it so few in comparison to those that come from a healthier backround that it's criminal that the playing fields couldn't be a bit more on the level seeing as it's those folks that really end up funding the rest.

That brings it all back to the way this nation is structured, fix that & you'll win the war on many fronts not just the war on poverty but it's really not a war our government wants to fight.

Sorry for the long ramble.

Barry