Education Building Canada: Child Poverty and Schools Essay

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….....