Reading, Persistence, & Trauma-- Stack Attack Against the Poor

Three articles linked by three different friends on three ostensibly different subjects-- reading, persistence, and trauma-- that actually fit together like three jigsaw puzzle pieces.

http://www.booksourcebanter.com/…/…/reading-achievement-gap/ from Nancy O'Leary Pew talks about low income kids not reading over the summer from a simple lack of access to books. YES, and… this is one of those places where "low income", term that seems so objective and unbiased, is incredibly misleading, because it points the mind toward the old idea that poverty is a simple lack of money, instead of grappling with the reality that poverty is a complex lack of resources. Such kids don't just have fewer books, but also thinner walls, greater stress, less space and more people packed into it. These kids are not going off for the summer to an intact nuclear family in a freestanding house with a treehouse in the yard and a well-recommended babysitter on call. Less reading happens if you are keeping your younger sibs out of trouble, if you are scratching together mac & cheese so your mama has a meal ready to eat in between her two shifts, if your time is not your own. Nobody's pulling the flashlight under the covers trick with an aunt and uncle crashed out on the floor beside their bed after a long day of looking for work. Let's not get into the sirens wailing down the street, the bottles smashing in the back alley, the grown-ups pushing to a window to check if that was a real scream or a play scream. Is this a reading environment? Poverty means less security, fewer options, less peace and less quiet. Not even getting into the issues for kids who need glasses. Not even getting into the social issues, the way having your head down in a book makes you literally physically more vulnerable to bullies of every kind.

That heads straight in to this powerful article on persistence from Julie Shusterman https://www.theatlantic.com/…/when-grit-isnt-enough/418269/… . The capacity of schoolchildren to lead and succeed is being judged from strictly white-collar assumptions about what "grit" should look like. Even more, it is not only that kids in poverty may be using their persistence in ways that are academically invisible... it is vital to understand the very specific way in which poverty works against persistence, period. Poverty teaches you not to put the few resources you have into anything that is not a *sure* thing. Trying new things in a way that is healthy "experimenting" if you are middle-class is flat-out dangerous **gambling** if you are poor. Even trying to cook a different kind of food is a whole new level of risk when you understand, there is not going to be anything else to eat if this does not turn out. Recently I wrote about watching myself actively teaching our four-year-old *not* to persist, because the ability to give up and move on quickly is key to our very survival. https://m.facebook.com/story.php…

And that brings us to this heartbreakingly indepth examination of how in depth children process from Kristie Walker
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…/run-gunfire-on-a-school-pl…/ . The critical, huge take-away here is that trauma impacts kids in completely unpredictable ways. I am going to spell out what "trauma" is here, from the work of Peter Levine: trauma is the mind-body break that happens when you are simultaneously aware that what you truly need most is in immediate jeopardy and that there is nothing you can do about it.

So, where does trauma come into it? The article illustrates trauma at its most recognizable: the single, obscene disruption to otherwise safe and comfortable lives. But that is not the whole picture of trauma. The question of how much strain one's muscles are under while holding a container of water depends not only on how heavy the container is but also on how long one must hold it. Research such as the CDC's ACE studies are confirming that trauma, like every other kind of damage, comes not only from the horrible sudden shock but also the wear and tear of the ever-present danger. "A two year old can't wait when hungry," says a friend at synagogue, and I stare in shock at words that would have been a joke in my neighborhood. Oh, yes, a two-year-old can wait when hungry, an 18-month-old can wait while hungry-- all it takes it regularly being in a position where you cannot feed your child and your child knows it. My synagogue hosted a workshop on how to buffer our children from our own fears at a time when current events have so many adults in a state of alarm. The key, according to the invited expert, was to make sure your children feel like you, the parent, have the power to take good care of them no matter what. My child has known better since 18 months old.

What one must keep in mind reading all this, is that from all indications, the college-educated parents of the rising (millennial) generation are raising their children in a level of density and unpredictability and daily compromise that the receding generation (boomers) would have considered low-end blue collar circumstances.
 The class privileges a larger upper-middle class set in cement ( https://mobile.nytimes.com/…/stop-pretending-youre-not-rich… from Rachel Jacobson ) are now posed to crush their grandchildren.

And all I can think is, my dear lord, NOTHING else is so important for the longterm than more parks and more libraries and safer streets for free-range children to be out on.