I
had a lot of questions involving brain development and income. I couldn’t
really decide what to research about because there are so many things that
involve these two things. Growing up in a low-middle class setting in the
outlying suburbs of Chicago, I really had to think about how my life was
affected by this idea of brain development and my level and my family’s level
of income. I was adopted and grew up in two houses, but mostly my grandma’s
house. She is a middle class citizen of Franklin Park. The other house was my
mom’s many houses that were all in “ghetto” parts of the city. I’m giving this
background because that’s how I came to decide what I wanted to research about
this topic. The topic I decided to research was how children are affected in school
because of hunger and poverty. Hunger can extremely affect brain development
and can affect a child in school so easily. I was never hungry, but mostly it
was because I had free breakfast and lunch at school. I never really put much
thought into why the school offered free lunch and breakfast to me. Later on,
my grandmother told me it was because we barely made bills and we pretty much
lived off my great grandma’s social security checks and my sisters dads’ child
support checks. My grandma did her best for us, and I will never say she didn’t
take care of us, but what if the school didn’t offer the free meal programs?
Would I still be college, or would I have been a high school drop out? Would my
grades have been severely affected at a young age? This is what I wanted to
find out. I researched about the effects of hunger on the brain, how schools
are trying to solve the problem and the problems in the school because of
hunger, and finally, I researched the big act of “No Child Left Behind” and how
poverty interacts with the program.
First,
hunger is something that impacts many people ranging from children to the
elderly. Hunger can destroy a bright mind very simply. Hunger does a lot to the
brain emotionally and physically. Physically, malnutrition and not eating can
cause significant problems for a person. Complications such as gaining or
losing weight, not having any energy, insomnia, and more could occur to a
person who isn’t eating correctly. For a child, this could be detrimental.
Children need enough energy to get through their day at school. Children should
want to run around and play with their friends, and without being able to eat
enough, they can’t and won’t. Also, if your child isn’t sleeping enough, they
won’t be able to even get through a day at school. Sleeping is so important to
a child’s health and if they are not eating properly and cannot sleep, this
will cause more complications down the line. Mentally, malnutrition and hunger
are also just as horrible. “The cells of your brain rely on energy from food
just like any other cell in the body. Without the nutrition that food supplies,
both your neural function and brain chemistry can be negatively impacted. This
in turn affects just about every facet of your bodily function that the brain
is involved in, including concentration, memory, sleep patterns, mood and your
motor skills” (Livestrong). This could prevent a child from learning, paying
attention, and being able to just get through a day at school. Hunger is so
common in this world and it happens for a lot of reasons. Hunger isn’t just not
having enough food, it is also having the right kind of food. A hungry child is
starving in other categories and school is a big one.
Next, education and schools face
challenges with poverty stricken children because of hunger. Food
insecurity—the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and
safe food— exists in 17.2 million households in America, 3.9 million of them
with children. This can mean a number of things ranging from their families
don’t get to pay enough attention to their child’s education due to working
more than one job, having lack of resources in the house for the child to be
able to succeed in school, and high levels of stress and worry in the household
which does affect the child greatly. Schools have to do a lot in order for
children to be able to maintain focus and make sure children are not too
malnourished or hungry. This means that they have implemented programs such as
after-school “dinner”, breakfast, and free lunch programs for the students who
qualify. This is a hassle in itself because how much does a family have to be
making in order to disqualify for this? What if the household is too big to
support all the family members? Schools should automatically be able to give
every student these options if the parent requests them. If the parent is
requesting it, they probably need it. There are more important things in this
world than lying to a school about whether or not your child needs free food
programming. Also, adding better nutrition into the schools is a necessary step
in this reformation of free lunches, breakfasts, and more the school offers.
They need to start making sure that the food isn’t doing more harm than good to
a child’s body. There are so many processed, junk foods that the schools serve
because they are cheap and easy to just reheat and give to the child. This is
doing the opposite of what it is supposed to do. Fat, sugar, and salt are in
these children’s diets and this needs to change. Brains and bodies cannot live
off unhealthy diets. “Rates of food insecurity are substantially higher than
the national average among households with incomes near or below the federal
poverty line, among households with children headed by single parents (35.1% of
female-headed households with children are food-insecure) and among Black and
Hispanic households” (Child Hunger In America). These facts are what we, as
Americans, need to know and to be able to help others. People in poverty
stricken neighborhoods and schools are suffering way more than we think they
are.
No
Child Left Behind is something I was eager to find out about. It was a great
idea, but it doesn’t always work. No Child Left Behind is a program that was
introduced in 2002. This may not have to do with hunger but I believe it is a
necessary topic to include in this paper about education. This program means .
Since the No Child Left Behind law took effect in 2002, it has had a huge
impact on U.S. public school classrooms. It affects what students are taught,
the tests they take, the training of their teachers and the way money is spent
on education. This law holds schools accountable, empowers parents and is
helping to close the achievement gap in America's schools. I researched this
topic because I was curious about how this program can be in place when there
are children failing out of school because of simple problems such as hunger
and poverty. How can parents be empowered when their children are suffering
because of things they wish they could control better? “Many critics, including
those who agree with the law's goals, argue that it is a
"one-size-fits-all" approach to education that overemphasizes testing
and doesn't provide enough money to schools to achieve success” (Great
Schools). This just shows that there isn’t just one solution that is going to
solve all the education problems. Without proper education, how can the brain
develop properly? Well, it cannot. People need structure to learn at a young
age, so they will be able to learn when they are older and don’t necessarily
have all the right guidance. Children in low income families have to deal with
bigger problems which inhibit education and prolongs brain development.
To
conclude, hunger and poverty are huge problems in education. Because families
cannot always have enough food in the house, children are forced to go to
school hungry. Going to school hungry means not being able to focus, having
difficulties making and maintaining relationships, forgetting things easily,
having high levels of stress, and the list goes on and on. These children are
suffering more than just being hungry, they are losing their educations.
Schools are offering programs though to help combat hunger but nutrition is an
issue for some. Malnutrition is not getting the right types of food that your
body needs and many of these children are malnourished. Being malnourished
causes many health, mental and physical, problems for a child. No Child Left
Behind, finally, is something we all need to pay close attention to down the
line for this future generation. Without knowing how poverty and hunger affect
education, we will not be able to solve the problem, but we will be continuing
it. There is enough food in america, enough resources to get educations, and
the right people to get the job done, but it’s just a matter of when we will
open our eyes to it, and be able to do something about it.
Bibliography
I loved that you wanted to address this topic, I think it is so important! I definitely agree at the seriousness of malnutrition as well as healthy eating. I cannot understand how schools do not try to provide healthier eating options when they provide for so many students. Fruits and vegetables can get pricy, but those who support and contribute to the schools budget should be more than happy to implement healthier meals for the students. It is especially important that the schools work towards healthier eating habits when many families work hard to keep their students eating healthy at home. Although the argument of sack lunches could arise, there are many families who work too often to always provide lunches for their children and leaving it up to the kids typically leads to junk food lunches. Unfortunately I think it would be hard to get the go for schools to accept anyone's request for their child(ren) to receive free lunches. I do agree however, that if parents are going out of their way to request it, they need it. I loved the comparison with the "one size fits all" when you talked about No Child Left Behind. I definitely never felt that this policy was a change for the better. There is such a reduction in creativity and therefore I think a reduction in children expressing themselves. With lack of expression, it becomes more difficult to understand what children are experiencing either at school or at home.
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