To think it is not poverty to blame.

[goneanddoneitnow]

I see in the news poverty being blamed for childrens bad behaviour and under achievement as well as for health problems.
I think it is attitudes that need changing not income.
If attitudes could be changed through education of parents and students then I think you would find that income and health will improve as a result.
If children are reaching school unable to sit still, listen, share etc, without basic skills and knowledge then what are the parents doing?
And secondly what is the point of free nursery places from age three?
Shouldn't nurseries be preparing children for school?
The majority of the wealthy are wealthy because of the time and effort their parents and family put in and the effort they them selves put in acquiring valuable skills and knowledge.
How many times have you seen big lottery winners lose it all in a few years?

also decentdragon i didn't see it as a baby step. to the kid i worked with back along who was 15 and on a slow train to nowhere, owning his own nice house at 30 and having a nice car plus the respect of his employees/colleagues wouyld be something beyond his wildest dreams. baby steps for him would be staying in one school long enough to bond with a teacher :-(

things have changed so so much. i can recall my dad earnestly telling me that if i didnt work hard at school i might have to work in tesco. he meant if i didnt pull my weight i might be saddled with what he though would be a low paid, dull job but that there would be jobs if i wasn't fussy. 20 years on if the kids i have worked with over the years ended up with a full time job in tesco i'd be over the bloody moon!

Jasmine - why don't you pay for her to see her family twice a year?

RMCW - "Most very very wealthy people are wealthy because their great great great great great great great grandma was a royal mistress."

Nonsense. Most of the richest people in the UK are rich because they built up a business of some kind. See the Sunday Times rich list 2010 - maybe two or three of them inherited all or part of their money. The ones whose ancestors were royal mistresses probably used to own some of the stately homes that became unmanageable after the first world war and are now hotels and conference centres or owned by the national trust, while the descendants of their owners could be anywhere. Inherited money does not last for ever, unless you have the business mind to keep it going.

Very true exexpat Most of the inbred buggars manage to piss their fortune away

So... if they pissed it away, they aren't wealthy

....orgies and laudanum cost money know violet!! And whores will have their trinkets

Absolutely.

But I still don't get your previous post about the very very wealthy. If a family have managed to hang on to inherited wealth, they've probably achieved it through some intelligent and creative means - see exexpats post above.

If they pissed it away, then surely you're happy that they're now poor?!

Nancy, I am not allowed to, she wouldn't get an exit permit. Actually I am only legally obliged to send her home once every 2 years. It's crap.

Jasmine - that's horrible. Poor thing.
But it is a big part of the Phillipinne/thai culture - maybe if you're raised knowing you will have to leave your kids it's easier...don't know. v.sad

expat....Gosh ime Chinese parents can be very cruel, not a lot of softness and there's no room for childhood.....bit like the UK in Victorian times. I guess a culture that still drowns girls at birth must have a overhang in it's people...unless they're a few generations down the line.

I don't see how poverty can be an excuse for poor behaviour. I think society over the last thirty years has made far too many excuses for those who are poor.

I suspect this thread has moved on somewhat, but the OP is somewhat off the mark, largely because they've conflated several issues together as one big issue.

Poverty does lead to underachievement and bad behavior; as a youth worker and mentor I've seen this time and again. It's largely due to boredom and opportunity - poor families simply can't afford to get their children the excursions, holidays, books, toys and distractions that TV tells children they are entitled to expect. These children get bored and disappointed, seeing this lack of material reward as some kind of reflection their character. At a very basic level - Santa doesn't give bad kids presents. I didn't get any presents (or, at least, I didn't get the presents I wanted or that Timothy whose Dad works for Lloyds got) therefore I must be bad, therefore I'll behave badly.

Oh there are some bad parents around, for sure, but it's often because their parents were bad, and theirs before them, and so on, ad infinitum. The cycle needs to be broken somehow.

The genuine poor in the UK (and they do exist) are failed by the school system - you only have to look at the stats for University entry to see this is the case.

I agree with the OP that attitudes need to change, though in this case I would say that the attitudes which need to change are the OPs - if people accepted that there was a problem and there was poverty we could crack it. Instead of saying "it's all the parents fault; how dare they not be born rich" we could actually pay more taxes for a welfare state that actually works, as in Sweden (where there was massive urban and rural poverty pre-WWII, entirely eradicated by progressive taxation and welfare polices).

So, yes, YABU

exexpat - Some of the people who have amassed their own fortunes have not done it in a terribly ethical or just manner. My former bosses in an international publishing company really fucked up, destroyed the company, but walked away with millions of pounds in of golden handshake, while the workers got made redundant (not all of them, someone bought the company but oddly the women on maternity leave were all sacked). Or a man I knew who ran a chain of nursing homes - he got a knighthood and all sorts of influential roles, while relatives' complaints about neglect and abuse of the residents were ignored. And when finally there was an investigation, it was extremely limited and he got off with a slap on the wrist.

Mr IC I agree with you to an extent but I believe it has all gone wrong because teachers, social workers, etc., have made too many excuses for badly behaved young people, rather than setting them straight and making it very very clear that if they fail to behave they will not achieve either academically or socially. The governments policies re funding and achievement/retention do not help either because they reinforce the fact that young people can get away with disgraceful behaviour just because they are underprivileged.

Edam - I quite agree, I would guess that being a nice, ethical person comes very low on the list of qualities needed to build up a huge business - I was just pointing out to RMCW that very few of the very wealthy inherited it all, as she had claimed.

And FWIW, although I and others on this thread having been playing up the role of education in pulling people out of poverty, having a good education is also fairly irrelevant to whether or not you become mega-rich - I have no idea how many of the people on the Sunday Times rich list have degrees, but I would guess it is a fairly low proportion.

The kind of drive and business ability (and possibly ambivalent attitude to the rule of law and normal ethical standards) are not the kind of thing you go to university to learn. They don't teach football, rapping, topless modelling etc either, and those can also earn you megabucks if you are lucky.

But in general a decent education is likely to keep you above the poverty line (unless ill-health, relationship breakdown etc knock you back) no matter how rich or poor you were growing up. And education levels are also correlated with better health, longer lifespans, lower likelihood of having a criminal record etc etc - though I am perfectly aware that correlation is different from causation.

oncemai - threatening young people with lack of social or academic just doesn't work - it's the wealthy who define what success means (and also, what good behavior is) and their definitions means absolutely nothing to some people.

as far as I'm concerned it's a fabulously rich who get away with the most disgraceful behaviour. Spray some graffiti on a shop wall (because the art classes at your school got cut and the youth centre has closed due to lack of funding) you get community service; poison a whole ecosystem in the Niger Delta and help prop up a corrupt system but make a massive profit while doing so, and you get applauded and knighted.

What do you mean made excuses for those who are poor?

Excuses for why they are poor? Excuses for what poor people do?

Because all poor people are the same arnt they and for the same reasons

Jesus there are people on MN who describe themselves as poor because they only have an income of 60k

As MrIC noted it is all part of the cycle of poverty. Being on a low/limited income doesn't necessarily equate to 'poor parenting' but an entrenched cycle of poverty and lack of opportunity/aspiration is what does the damage.

And once someone is 'poor' it's damn hard to stop being poor. Very often you can't get to decent supermarkets to buy decent food (due to transport costs), you are 'forced' to pay more for your energy costs (pre payment meters) and can feel that you have no control over your own destiny with regard to housing choices and schooling.

Add into that the fact that you may come from a family where people have had negative educational experiences, or live in an area where aspiration is looked on with suspicion then it all becomes a little bit more complex than just a question of money.

With regard to addressing the situation it is clear that early intervention is the key. In 2010 it was estimated that there were 600,000 pre schoolers living in poverty....and yet there were only 42,000 free nursery places available. And the economic situation means that another generation will miss out on the targeted support needed to break the cycle.

All the self=made men and women I know have screwed lots of people over along the way.

MrIC, as I mentioned earlier, I am a social worker who was once a teacher with lots of innercity experience.

I actually see plenty of very poor families who are bringing their chiuldren up to respect their teachers and value education and work.

If I didn't see this I could almost understand and accept the blanket excuses that are trotted out about society failing poor kids. However, what am I to think when two sets of parents in similar circumstances are bringing their children up so differently?

Also, I grew up in Easterhouse. One of the most deprived areas of the country. My father was a miner who left school at 15. My parents would never have tolerated an attitude that respect for others and myself was optional. As I said, I see many parents today with the same ethos so I'm often left wondering how come them and not the others.

And yes, I am well aware of the cycle of poverty. But again, I have worked with countless parents who are struggling financially and whose kids go to what is often described as a 'sink school'. However, at home they play games and read books. They walk to parks (easier in urban areas, I know) and generally try everything to break the cycle.

I once worked with a single mother of a 13yr old lad in a very deprived area who approached scores of local tradesmen to ask if any would give her son odd jobs at the weekend with the hope that it would lead to a sense of self respect and aspiration. It worked.

There are areas in my town where the children do not have a prayer. They are poor financially yes, but that isn't the worst of it. They have poverty of expectation, their parents have poverty of expectation and experience. They don't have respect for education because the education they managed to get acheived nothing for them. Their horizons are low and they have no power or desire to overreach them.

To fight against these odds you have to be exceptional. How many of us are sufficiently exceptional?

MrIC that video link you posted is fascinating. I think the speaker is spot on - I also completly agree that we are are over diagnosing/medicating kids with ADHD

What is poverty in this country though?

Poverty in most of the world is living on less than $1 a day, having no access to housing, clean water, food, education, medical care.

People considered in poverty here would have a lifestyle most people in the world only dream of. If you don't work in most of the world, you don't eat and you die in the street. Here if you don't work, you get free money, free housing, child benefit, child tax credits when you don't even pay tax. Need I go on?

Poverty here is not having enough money to buy a new car or afford the latest iPhone.