Education Building Canada: Child Poverty and Schools

¶ … Education Building Canada: Child Poverty and Schools This article is written by the Canadian Teachers Federation (CTF), an organization of over 200,000 teachers in and around Canada. One of the primary initiatives of the CTF is to reduce the ongoing issue of child poverty. In 2008, the Campaign 2000's report card indicated that child poverty rates in Canada are as high as they were recorded in 1989.

This staggering statistic is powerful for many reasons but primarily because reducing child poverty has been an initiative that Canada has aimed to address for many years now. This article provides a summary of powerful statistics that address child poverty and point out such things as the increasing rate of poverty in aboriginal communities, rates of food bank uses, number of families who would need to earn dramatically more money to even hit the poverty line.

The article goes on to address child poverty and the self-concept and perceptions of children living in poverty and specifically addresses such perceptions within the school environment. Quotations by children living in poverty and the ostracized ways they feel, as well as the shame and embarrassment is explicit within the article. Ultimately a powerful link is drawn between the socioeconomic status of a child and his or her academic performance.

The article goes on to address a call for action on the part of grant recipients, Ben Levin and Jane Gaskell who are addressing issues of urban poverty and Canadian Schools. These principal investigators suggest a need to address class size, school budgets, and school resource personal in order to instill change in the current system.

Federal government responsibilities conclude the article by providing a series of background information on the perceptions of the Canadian public regarding the abilities of the federal government to instill change in this area of tremendous need. Reference Canadian Teachers Federation. Supporting Education Building Canada: Child Poverty and Schools. 2009. Summary of: Current and Potential School Systems Response to Poverty In their article, Current and Potential School Systems Response to Poverty, Levin and Riffel, discuss the lack of focus on poverty within current education policy.

The authors readily admit that poverty is not caused by schools and nor will schools be the answer or solution to poverty, however they believe that a school's understanding of poverty related issues are paramount in understanding the population of children within Canadian society. The authors draw immediate attention to the positive correlation between socioeconomic status and educational outcomes of a student. The lack of attention and focus, therefore on poverty related issues is a glaring omission of the educational system and policies associated with it.

This article describes a study that has multiple parts and looked at different poverty related issues in Canada. The first part examined collaborative case studies with numerous different districts in Canada. Through interviews and reviewing.