Summary: The Myth Of Poverty

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Broadway Middle School’s candy fundraiser might have alienated students who come from low-income families in multiple ways. Unlike the students who come from high-income families, the low-income students may not have family members who can afford to pay for the candy bars. Their parents may also be very busy working so they do not have the time to drive their children around to sell the candy bars. Since these low-income students were unable to sell many candy bars, social class biases began to form. For example, one of the high-income parents said that his son worked hard to sell all his candy bars, and that the low-income student was simply not trying hard enough to sell them. They were basically saying that these low-income students are lazy and need to try harder, when in reality they were trying just as hard, if not harder, to sell the candy bars. Relating to the idea of deficit views in the course reader, The Myth of The Culture of Poverty, the high-income families believed that because the students were not trying hard …show more content…

In this case, the high-income families wanted to vote on whether they should continue the candy bar fundraiser or not. They clearly took advantage of the traditional way of handing issues in their meetings, because they knew they would win the majority vote since many of the low-income parents were unable to attend the meeting. In this case, the school did not handle the situation with equity, they basically just singled out the few low-income families and didn’t let them have an even vote on the issue. The school could have handled this situation differently by maybe sending home a survey or worksheet for the all the low-income and high-income families to fill out. Then they would be allowing all the families to have a say in whether they should continue the fundraiser or

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