Beth Blue Swadener's Article Children and Familes: At Promise

“At Promise”: Children and Families

When an individual hears the words, ‘at risk’, they immediately think of all the negative characteristics of terminology: teen pregnancy, troubled teens, gang bangers, drop outs, substance abusers, and so on. I know I sure did. In reading Beth Blue Swadener’s article, “Children and Families “at Promise”: Deconstructing the Discourse of Risk”, I’ve learned that there are so much more to labeling at student ‘at risk’. There is actually a history behind the meaning and how ‘at risk’ became such a dangerous label. In rethinking the meaning of ‘at risk’ and changing it to ‘at promise’, places an entirely new meaning and may give hope to those who are lost and forgotten.

There is much of Swadener’s article that I agreed, disagreed, and in some instances, just appalled with. The beginning of her article, Swadener makes the following statement that struck out at me, “…there is an emerging ideology of risk, which has embedded in it interpretations of children’s deficiencies or likelihood of failure due to environmental, as well as individual, variables”. This statement hit me hard because I never thought of ‘at risk’ students as having “deficiencies” or being destined to fail due to variables beyond their control. I may be naïve in my thinking of what ‘at risk’ truly meant but I would have never labeled students as having “deficiencies”.

Swadener continues with some of the child advocacy organizations that work to dismantle the harsh beliefs about children and families living in poverty stricken areas. They create and/or improve governmental policies as well as programs to aid address specific needs of ‘at risk’ students and families. In reading what they do, I was happy to see that the organizations are working to solve the problems rather than pointing the finger at how the students’ lives became to be such a way. Also, I knew that there are programs out to help ‘at risk’ students, but it never occurred to me that families are labeled ‘at risk’ as well. Swadener listed some of the ‘at risk’ programs which I was surprised to see that I am enrolled for most: Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Head Start which is a program that helps pregnant women obtain prenatal insurance before enrolling for governmental insurance such as Title 19, Badger Care, and/or Managed Health. Seeing these programs listed in Swadener’s article gave me twisted emotions.