Thursday, March 31, 2011
Generating discussion questions for today's class
Before we start discussing the first half of Jonathan Kozol's Rachel and Her Children, I'd like you to take five minutes and reflect what you've read so far. What do you think the most important issue is so far in Kozol's discussion? Why do you think it is important for us to talk about? Second, come up with at least one open-ended question about the reading that you think will engage your peers and generate a robust discussion for today's class meeting. Identify a passage or section from the text, too, that you think will help us answer your question.
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I think that the most important issue discussed thus far is that of the welfare of homeless children. The children described in Kozol's book are not getting nearly the right nutrition and are living in quite dire living circumstances. A question that I would like to use in discussion is how - how do these children survive in a world like this? What traditional and nontraditional roles do their parents (or lack thereof) play?
ReplyDeleteThe two most important issues thus far involve the issue of children facing homelessness. The environment of the housing developments is clearly not one which is a health environment for children to grow and develop. The issues then become the separating of family and if that actually works to the benefit of the children, or if leaving their parents is more harmful as well as how do children in these housing situations continue their education.
ReplyDeleteThese are important issues because poverty does become a cycle. In order to end it often times it is more important to focus on the youth of a nation and try to stamp out the problem by finding solutions early on in their life and development.
My question is less relevant, but one which I personally find interesting: What role does religion play in motivation for the homeless? Is it positive or negative to have spiritual guidance in such circumstances or does it become a distraction? This is a reoccurring issue, but the most prominent passage is that of Rachel speaking to the interviewer, at the end of Part 1 Chapter 4 when she begins to question her faith to the interviewer.
The most important issue so far to me in Kozol’s discussion is the concealment of the inhumane shelters being provided to citizens. There is virtually no way for an outsider to know what the Martinique is, especially with Kozol’s description of the outside of it. Also the circles the cities have people going around to find housing and pay rent seem ridiculous. There have now been too many examples to count of circumstances in which people could be living for less than what the city is paying for them to be housed in a hotel. The busing of children was one particular example of the extreme oddity of that situation. Based on this, I think it is important to talk about why the city feels it needs to go to such great lengths to hide these people and make them jump through so many hoops.
ReplyDeleteDoes making people suffering from homelessness jump through hoops to get welfare checks and find affordable housing make it easier for others to not feel sorry for those suffering? “They are charged with ‘endangerment’ and put in jail before their children can be buried” (119).
While Kozol covers a wide spectrum of demographics through the first half of the book, his particular investigation to homeless youth or children of homeless families with children pulls at the heart strings (not to be too cliche). For example the anecdote from New York speaks to great length on the inequities in education offered to youth who are homeless. A majority of the youth are often "bused" for long distances to attend school in the district they ORIGINALLY lived. From a pragmatic and psychological point of view this becomes dramatically exhausting. The impact on youth transcends grades ultimately effecting their personal development. Kozol again continues to illustrate the difficulties and even ironies of treating the symptoms rather source of homelessness. At one point, implicitly at least, he suggests these tragic ironies within public policy could in fact ensure homeless for youth in the future. While my question originally was going to concern the practical solutions to programs like these I felt the answer was obvious. Rather I felt it would be interesting to ask, since 1988 and the updated aspects from 2006, is his research (to our knowledge) still a predictor or direct narrative on homelessness among youth today? Have programs or initiatives changed general trends (or your perceptions of the issue)?
ReplyDeleteThe issue that strikes me as most conerning is the insufficent amount of money welfare allows for rent. Most of the families Kozol interviews state that they have found somewhere they could live for just slightly more money. The book also repeatedly brings up the fact that the government is wasting huge portions of their money on keeping people in the hotels when less money could be spent to raise their welfare allowance and start to solve the problem of people's homelessness.
ReplyDeleteI think this is an important issue to discuss because it is clearly a lack of discussion that has created the problem. Instead of taking progressive actions to help get families out of the hotels and into a real living space the government chooses to ignore the issue. This not only harms the people on welfare who cannot find an affordable place to live, but also the government because they are wasting money.
Why do you think that the government does not change their welfare policies when it not only prohibits homeless people on welfare from finding an affordable place to live, but also when it is costing the government more money than it should?
One of the things from the book that really struck me was how hard it is for people to get out of being homeless once they become so. It seems like the system is working against them. I was surprised by how much the cities pays to run the hotels rather than giving more money to help people get into more stable living situations. It seems so frustrating and hard to understand. They seemed to be stuck in a system where they tried to follow the rules, such as searching for housing each day, when really things were hopeless. One of my questions is, why is the system set up this way? Do the people in the book understand what they are up against?
ReplyDeleteI was also amazed by the strength of some of these people. While some families were torn apart there were others that worked very hard to stay together in terrible circumstances. Certain regulations did not make this easy, often discouraging husbands from staying with their wives for different reasons. What is it that kept certain families together, such as Annie and her family?
Although Kozol brings up many important issues in his study on the homeless, he continually returns the the development and wellbeing of children. The reiteration of this topic leads me to believe that it is the most important one thus discussed. Even in part one of his study, he lingers on the experiences of Rachel's children and their troubles. It's important to discuss the wellbeing of homeless children because they have a strong implications for America's future. This leads me to ask: in what ways do emotionally damaged children effect the progress of a state? How can we move away the association of the homeless with those who are legitimately dangerous?
ReplyDeleteI think the two most important issue that Kozol discusses in his book are the detrimental affects that homelessness has on families and children, and that the governments' systems of providing for these families is not only inefficient, but regressive. I think it is important that we discuss and try to understand why so many families are trapped in endless cycles of poverty because it is important that we can be able to empathize with the homeless. It is also important for us to understand how these people are emotionally affected by the situations they face so that we can relate better to the women we will be working with at the shelter.
ReplyDeleteSo, my question for the class is, how has homelessness affected the people and families that Kozol discusses in his books? What factors have contributted to their states?
P. 106 "'Half his head and brains were on the floor around the corner where he had been shot...Can we expect that children do not see these things? ...We have now seen Angelina coming home in handcuffs. More important, she has seen herself in handcuffs. The end of innocence for Rachel's children seems to be at hand.'"
An important issue in Kozol's discussion is the emotional effect that all the aspects of homelessness have on a person and families. People stereotype homeless people as unmotivated, but many try incredibly hard to find apartments in their welfare budget. Page 57 exemplifies one family's motivation. How would you motivate a family or yourself in their position?
ReplyDeleteI don’t think there is one issue that trumps the rest, but rather a combination of issues that form the problem as a whole. In fact, I think one of the more important points of this book is that political and broader societal views of homelessness are often too reductive and fail to identify and adequately acknowledge the multitude of social, political, and personal factors that compose the experience of homelessness.
ReplyDeleteOn page 76, Kozol writes, “The inclination to judge harshly the behavior of a parent under formidable stress seems to be much stronger than the willingness to castigate the policies that undermine the competence and ingenuity of many of these people in the first place.” Why is the American tendency to blame the parent before we blame the state? Think about this historically and in terms of our social norms? Or is this not a specifically American tendency, but a broader human tendency to blame the individual rather than the state?
Here's Maddie's comment:
ReplyDeleteOne of the most significant issues so far in Kozol's book is the lack of opportunity these homeless families have. Their choices are so limited as to how to get out, it is IMPOSSIBLE. Also, being in the shelter is degrading enough in itself (a great deal of swallowing one's pride and asking for help which results in begging for nothing), but the lack of sanitary options given to these people only worsen their esteem. One sheet of toilet paper for a family that is suffering from indigestion and no money for diapers literally makes these families feel dirty and worthless.
Q: In what ways does the shelters/hotels diminish the hope for these families? Who is to blame? The gov't? The families? The hotels?
Upon reflecting on what I’ve read so far in Jonathan Kozol’s Rachel and Her Children, I noticed a theme of insufficiency and ineffectiveness of government programs to help displaced families in terms of education, housing, and ultimately, getting out of the horrifying conditions of the shelters or barracks. I believe the most pressing issues in Kozol’s discussion are that of families’ inability to get out of the conditions of the shelters because of a lack of funds to support them in doing so. For example, Kozol introduces Christopher and his children who are severally suffering from anxiety, sleep deprivation, and hunger. The father tells Kozol, how his former boss offered to give him his job back if he would come in at 5 a.m. every morning. The father commented, “There’s no way that I would do it. Would you leave your kids alone within a place like that at 5 a.m.? I couldn’t do it.” (67) When he asked the welfare program directors if he could move his mother in with him, so that he could go to work and have someone look over the children, they denied him. I believe it is imperative to evaluate these programs and really determine whether they are working for the homeless or against. They seem to be working in contradiction of what they are “meant” to be. President Regan stated, “I don’t believe there is anyone that is going hungry in America simply by reason of denial…it is simply not knowing where to go for help.” (74) This idea that they don’t know where to go to help is ridiculous because we hear these stories of families traveling hours from place to place in pursuit of work or shelter and following whatever the directors tell them.
ReplyDeleteRachel asserts, “You hear that song? They’re not thinking about people starving here in the U.S. I was thinkin’: Get my kids and all the other children here to sing, ‘We are the world. We live here too.’ How come do you care so much for people you can’t see? Ain’t we the world? Ain’t we a piece of it? We are something people in America don’t want to see.” (78) The question I am proposing is how do we help Americans while simultaneously being global contributors, and which should take first priority, if one should over the other?
The theme I saw throughout the reading in Kozol's Rachel and Her Children was very simple: the children.
ReplyDeleteThe ideas of psychological issues, education, and the cycle of homelessness were all addressed intermingled with the children and their futures. Kozol states "knowingly or not, we are creating a diseased, distorted, undereducated, and malnourished generation of small children...who will grow into the certainty of unemployable adulthood." I think the importance of getting these kids out of the cycle somehow is so important in this novel.
So that leads to my question: how does Kozol portray the education system for homeless children? Why do they so often drop out of school?
How do we fix this cycle? What kind of programs could we create? What can we do to change this?
I think the most important issue so far in Kozol’s discussion is the impact and consequences innocent and helpless children of homeless families face as a result of their families’ unfortunate circumstances. Kozol seems to make the point that the lack of support for families struggling with and facing homelessness inevitably breaks apart families and negatively impacts the children’s’ futures in sometimes irreparable ways. This shines light on the seemingly hopelessly perpetuating cycle of homelessness, which makes it close to impossible for those within its grasps to escape the cycle. It seems that the families, especially the homeless mothers seem to feel forced to accept the unfortunate reality that they will not be able to keep their children, and their families will be split apart by either state intervention, their lack of resources, or lack of health care. It is important for us to talk about this issue because the help being provided specifically to families experiencing homelessness is not sustainable and not enough to provide the support the families need. If the issue of homelessness is going to improve, more sustainable support and resources need to be offered to families experiencing homelessness.
ReplyDeleteWhat impact / influence does the role of the power of “mind over matter” play in many of these families’ ability to maintain resilience and overcome obstacles? In this passage, the power of mind over matter involves maintaining religious faith and belief. “‘I do believe. God forgive me. I believe He’s there. But when He sees us like this, I am wonderin’ where is He? I am askin’: Where the hell He gone (p. 85)?’”