By looking around campuses of Ivy League schools, one wonders how students from such diverse backgrounds ultimately wound up at the same place. As a Barnard tour guide, I wonder what cultural and economic capital it must have taken for myself to get into college. When I give special tours to underprivileged high schoolers in NYC, I am often shocked about how little they are aware of financial aid opportunities and how they are in a completely different mindset than I was as a senior in high school.
Students that I have met have explained how they must go to college in order to get a job to support their families, whereas I have the luxury to study whatever I want. How does a student with absolutely no resources play the admission’s game? From taking this course on homelessness in NYC, I wanted to combine my interests in education with impoverished youth to see if there was a correlation. My research showed that there is a disparity in our education system targeting homeless youth specifically.
According to an article published by the U.S. Department of Education, one of the most direct ways to target homelessness is to educate their young. In this essay, I will explore what it means to be a homeless student in poverty and how poverty limits educational opportunities. By examining a wide variety of sources, including the stories of several individuals and experts, I hope to offer a well-rounded perspective on the state of educational inequality for youths.
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The term “poverty” and “homeless” must first be defined, so that we are clear on the pool of individuals to be discussed in this essay. According to Economic and Political Weekly’s definition, poverty results from having a deficiency in income, human development, and social exclusion. This “holistic” definition emphasizes the vulnerability of the poor and places a considerable amount of responsibility for controlling poverty on society. It can describe an extreme form of poverty, especially when all these elements of deprivation coexist.
According to the National Health Care for the Homeless, homelessness is defined as an individual who lacks housing, including those who’s primary housing during the night is by a public or private organization, and those who’s housing is a place not meant for human inhabitation (such as a park, streets, abandoned building). Lacking in cultural, economic, and social capital, children in these situations (ages eighteen and under) have greater needs than “underprivileged” children. Lacking Bourdieu’s forms of capital, homeless students are automatically at a disadvantage. There is constant crossover between these two terms in society, and also in many individuals discussed in this paper.
Although one of the most developed countries in the world, the United States has one of the highest rates of childhood homelessness at 1.3M, according to the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness. Children raised homeless or in poverty face a number of disadvantages, especially when it comes to education such as poor physical health and motor skills, diminishing ability to concentrate and remember information, and reduces curiosity and motivation.
Often, when parents have little to no education, their children will follow in their footsteps because they are not aware of what opportunities exist. Harris says that “being homeless robbed my family and me of an understanding of how the world works. Receiving a college degree will ensure that I can obtain the cultural capital necessary to help support my family and others affected by homelessness. It is important for me to be able to ensure that others understand how to navigate social systems and achieve success, while still offering active support” (1, Harris).
Additionally, even if poor children are motivated and perform well in school, they lack the resources to attain better education in the future and lack the knowledge to seek out financial aid opportunities. Many educational institutions offer need-based scholarships which can sometimes be a full-ride on tuition, however, it is not well advertised for students to take advantage of. Without a decent education, it is difficult to break the cycle of generational poverty and lead rewarding, productive lives.
This paper was also inspired by a video that went viral on social media in 2016. The video, titled The Privileged Race: A Social Experiment, was about an experiment by CNA Insider in which about 20 young adults stood in a line shoulder to shoulder. The researcher asked questions and if the subjects agreed with the statement, they took a step forward. If the subjects disagreed, they took a step back. This experiment has been replicated dozens of times for educational purposes in schools, and each time different questions have been asked, based on if the theme of the experiment was race, sexuality, socioeconomic status, or gender.
Those who ended up in the front supposedly enjoy more social privileges than those in the back. This time, students were told that they were racing to win an $100 bill. The researcher said “Before I say ‘go’, I am going to make a few statements. If those statements apply to you, I want you to take a step forward. If the statements don’t apply to you, stay where you are” (CNA Insider).
