Sounds more like you are unmotivated. And unrealistic.
Unmotivated to do what?
Unrealistic about what?
I find it difficult to believe that you raised all of your children's friends, much less without assistance from foster care.
They weren't always all there all at once. But I do remember we had a housefull and I was only getting $37 a week unemployment for a month or more and I wonder, "How did we get by?" But that was during the early 70's and money was worth a little more then.
And its great that you have lifted yourself out of your self described life of poverty.
Not sure I lifted myself any place. A lot of it is where you live. In New York City or L.A. on what I earn I'd still live in the slums -- Excuse me, Ghettoes now, renting a small room or two in a tenement. But I live in a small town where buying a house on my income is normal.
Also I would like to point out that my youth in the slums was mostly happy times. My biggest problem then is the same as now: A lot of people who believe everything must be taken "Oh so seriously."
Being poor in and of itself is not such a bad thing, it is the people you have to live with that make life miserable, and that can happen in any economic bracket.
However, for the deaf child living in poverty, you have doubled their risk of becoming an educational failure.
Agreed.
And yes, I agree with shel--it is most definately a sociological problem.
I agree also that it is sociological.
A better word might be systemic.
But since you persist in telling us how uneducated you are, perhaps you have never read the research that confirms this.
No perhaps to it. I have not. More over I probably would not unless I had a compelling reason to do so.
Unfortunately studies often tend to confirm either what any person would know with simple observation and thought, and the conclusions drawn tend to support the belief system of those who run the study.
Let's put it this way:
Proving that children with indolent, lazy, undereducated parents who could care less if their child succeeds in school or not more often than not produce children that fail the educational system does not cause the parent to change nor cause the child to become more scholastically successful.
Proving the parent is at fault does not change the parent nor help the child.
And if the parent is illiterate they may not be able to help the child if they wanted to.
Then there are parents such as myself who believe that neither scholastic nor monetary success necessarily produces a successful human being. I'm not sure exactly what does make a successful human being, but I think being the sort of person you would think well of if you met them tomorrow would be a good start.
The question then becomes not "Who is at fault" but "How do you motivate the child to learn?" and perhaps "How do you motivate the parents to learn as well?"
