To the Editor:
I become riled every time I read or hear persons using insulting, demeaning, disgusting and reprehensible excuse implying that persons in poverty are dumber than others and that hinders their success.
I grew up during the great depression years of the 1920s and 1930s where poverty was rampant without school meals and food stamps. Many mornings all I had for breakfast was a bowl of stale hard cut up homemade bread and milk. That didn’t hinder my determination to learn all I could so I could achieve success in whatever I chose to do. Also, our school system and society outlook as a whole was positive and dealt on how to succeed without the poverty lame excuse. Many businesses were created and many new inventions occurred from persons that helped millions of others. Since that depression many people in poverty have succeeded in various endeavors and enterprises that have continued to this day. If poverty is a hindrance as the naysayers contend, why such success? Learning from those successes and how to achieve would go a long way in helping those in poverty gain success, and pride as many have done in the past instead of implying that they are dumber because of poverty and can’t succeed.
It's way past time for the naysayers who demean people by implying poverty causes failure. Everyone is born with a brain and it depends on the knowledge put in that brain and opportunities that are available that cause success and not failure. The naysayers should get on the positive track and develop ways to improve including education to prepare students for the real world so everyone — no matter if poor or not — has a real chance to succeed as high as their abilities will carry them.
Schools should always deliver the best education possible to meet the challenges of today particularly with rapidly changing technology. We shouldn’t have schools like we do in Mt. Vernon that don’t prepare seniors for college and beyond to their detriment. That has nothing to do with poverty.
I urge all naysayers to quit making demeaning excuses about poverty and start to be positive in showing the way to the ladder of success. The sooner the better.
Frank Medico
Mt. Vernon