Schools 'cannot cope' with extreme poverty

More distressing news from "Merrie Olde England."

As I've stated before, the news that comes out of the UK seems increasingly grim, even compared to the USA. It seems that nation is truly spiraling into a dark place. One more piece of a terrible puzzle:

Schools 'cannot cope' with extreme poverty

Schools are struggling to cope with increasing numbers of children raised in Dickens-style poverty, according to a teachers’ leader.


Some pupils from the poorest areas arrive at school without toilet training, unable to dress themselves or use a knife and fork, it was claimed.

Lesley Ward, president of the 160,000-strong Association of Teachers and Lecturers, warned that many children were also being relied upon to raise younger brothers and sisters and lacked stable father figures in the home.

One in seven pupils lives 'close to only one secondary' In a speech, she said it was “next to impossible” for schools to counter the effect of serious deprivation, family breakdown and a lack of parenting skills in many communities.

[snip]

Mrs Ward, a primary school teacher from Doncaster, said Labour had “tried hard on this issue” but had failed to fill the vacuum left by the death of the mining and manufacturing industries in many working-class communities.

She said it meant a “small, significant and growing minority” of children were being raised in families with low expectations and a level of poverty “mirroring the times of Dickens”. It suggests some communities are living in conditions commonly seen in Victorian England.

“I am talking about perfectly healthy children who enter school not yet toilet-trained,” she said. “Children who cannot dress themselves, children who only know how to eat with a spoon and fingers, and have never sat around a table to enjoy a home-cooked family meal. Children who think that the word ‘no’ means if you throw a wobbly it will miraculously turn into yes.

“Children who get themselves, and sometimes their younger siblings, up in the morning. Children who bring themselves to school at very young ages. Children who sometimes don’t know who will be at home when they get home – if anyone. Children who don’t know exactly who the father figure is in the home from month to month.”

She added: “I know of a pupil who actually saw, from the classroom window during a lesson, his house door being kicked in and his dad being led out of the door in handcuffs – this was during Sats week. He did not achieve the level he should have. Are we surprised?”

More of this sad news at source:
www.telegraph.co.uk...

It doesn't cost money to teach children basic skills. This sounds like more of a drug problem, than a poverty issue.

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[edit on 11-9-2009 by TrainDispatcher]

Originally posted by stevegmu
It doesn't cost money to teach children basic skills. This sounds like more of a drug problem, than a poverty issue.

Maybe; I see the breakdown of the family structure as another possible root cause.

The British are the "bleeding edge" of political correctness. For years they have been hammering away at traditional values from every angle. Now we see the results: Thousands of fatherless families or families without a male role model; extrereme feminism; the Archbishop of Canturbury endorsing the possibility of Sharia law in certain areas; insane levels of survalience with cameras everywhere, etc etc.

Its a grotesque and shameful outcome for the nation that gave the world the Magna Charta, in my opinion.

reply to post by stevegmu


Agreed... many, many people grow up in poverty, yet their parents were loving enough to potty-train them and teach them to speak, eat and so on .. certainly doesn't cost money to learn how to eat with a fork.

reply to post by silent thunder


Just looking at contemporary British culture now and you'd know they're really going down the loo.

They make nothing. They have an inferior car industry that has to rely on foreign rivals. They make pathetic music (well, this includes the whole of the Anglosphere except the US.) They're more celebrity and reality show obsessed even compared to Americans. The whole country is just grim. Must be the weather.

Its all down to are feral greedy self serving politicians,
Bring back are Victorian system it was harse but worked, it taught right from wrong, And made you want to be produtive in life, Not be state depentant, to want to pull your self out from the gutter...
No nice jails then, pure sweat and tears....

There's absolutely no reason you cannot be poor and remain civilized.

Sounds more like you have a problem with feral children than poor children.

What exactly is the minimum earned wage at which I should be able to wipe myself and put my pants on? How far below that minimum do I start to suffer from an inability to cut meat with a knife or pick it up with a fork?

Really, as sad as this is to say, I see this issue as being a result of the modern worlds inability to "let nature take its course" so to speak. We have these children being raised by absolute incompetents without the basic grasp of humanity, resulting in children that are barely more than animals.

How does this happen? Because society feels the need to support the parents at every turn instead of simply dropping them. Social welfare allowing them to loaf about on their shoestring budget all day instead of using that shoestring to prosper and get ahead in life.

The issue is compounded by the various "no child left behind policies" that have made high school diploma's essentially worthless in society, meaningless because everyone is pumped through school and only the absolutely entirely useless dregs are dropped.

Don't get me wrong, I was born into poverty, raised on the edge of homelessness, but I graduated with two scholarships and have helped my family get back from the edge. My mother raised me to be a proper benefit to society, always taught us to be better than our money might make us out to be, to have dignity.

We need to go back to letting natural selection weed out the dregs that are dragging the rest of society down, the chavs and the other useless drains that live off our tax dollars and spawn animals like the children in this article. Its harsh, but entirely true.

“Children who cannot dress themselves........Children who get themselves, and sometimes their younger siblings, up in the morning.

they can't dress themselves but they can get themselves and their siblings out to school in the morning? seems unlikely.

not that i'm usually one to dismiss the telegraphs frequent claims that society is deteriorating, but seriously, there always has to be a "worst family in the area", there is always going to be a bell curve.

rough families have always existed, they've only been "out of control" since they started the war on drugs. clearly, it has nothing to do with the fact that the police and prisons spend all their time, and money, dealing with drug possession and none on the petty crime that's making life a misery and creating an atmosphere where raising your child in this manner is acceptable socially.

[edit on 11/9/09 by pieman]