Is anyone undeserving of support? Some people clearly think so.
For example, Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail thinks that all of us, rich or poor, are equally capable of making choices. “The choice to be honest rather than fiddling the benefits system. To work, however demeaning the job, in preference to taking state charity. To bring children into the world only where there is a committed father to help bring them up.”
Mail Online 30th Dec 2010
Negative stereotyping is commonplace in the media, labelling people in poverty as ‘scroungers’, ‘feckless’ or ‘lazy’. Research from Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests that media coverage tends to focus on extreme cases, highlighting the inherent ‘failings’ of undeserving people. On the whole coverage of poverty is peripheral in mainstream UK media.
Joseph Rowntree Foundation Research - Media Coverage of Poverty
There is a lot of mythology surrounding the notion of the ‘deserving and undeserving poor’. For example, at Red Kite Learning we have learned from experience that people who are not working are not necessarily lazy, and people who are working have not necessarily escaped poverty. It’s not as simple as that. It is easy to be dismissive about some of the problems faced by people but much harder to deliver practical solutions. Red Kite Learning delivers practical solutions every day.
Ms Phillips goes on to admit in the same article (link above) that “it is crucial to offer all poor people assistance which will give them a leg up and out of poverty rather than kick away the ladder of opportunity from beneath their feet.”
Precisely what our campaign is for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6OLguh7_P8
ReplyDeleteThe demonising of the poor is not just another example of the ongoing bullying of the disadvantaged by those in the position of privilege and power.
ReplyDeleteIt also illustrates that the model of social justice dreamed of by great people like Ghandi and ML King is sadly still in its infancy.
Those who are quick to judge others who are stumbling often forget that we all do not have the same starting point. The achievement of an underprivileged child gaining a single grade C at GCSE may outweigh a string of A grades from one Eton initiated. Even with the political pretence of meritocracy as an ideal, far too often the life chances of those who start last are still to come last. Even in 2010 the proportion of those receiving free school meals entering Oxbridge was still less than one per cent.*
What makes such social injustice even more sickening is that this form of bullying is perpetuated in the zeitgeist by our predominantly right wing press who represent the interests of those in power and are surreptitiously proactive in the manipulation of the vox populi.
Often tirades against ‘scroungers’, and the ‘work shy’ ironically stem from the aristocratic ‘idle rich’ or those ‘born to rule’ with every advantage at their disposal.
Is there not something perverse in a politic where sir Fred Goodwin can stand tall, defiantly smiling, while help for those at the bottom struggling to regain dignity is stripped away amidst derisive chants of ‘undeserving’....
Let’s shout it loud: IT IS THE DUTY OF EVERY ONE WHO HAS BENEFITED FROM SOCIETY TO GIVE SOMETHING BACK TO HELP THOSE WHO HAVE NOT!
LET’S TAKE IT TO THE BANKS!
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/22/percentage-poor-pupils-oxbridge-one-percent
Richard Sennett, the american sociologist, argues that ‘Talent is not scarce: most people can do most jobs, given appropriate training and support, and therefore our obsession, particularly in the UK and the USA, to organise education primarily as a winnowing process, using continuous testing to weed out the few from the many, is wasteful to the economy as well as unfair in social terms.’ We persistently try to ‘cut’ ability and talent much too finely, usually by using the blunt instrument of standardised testing in some form. Most people can actually do reasonably well at most jobs – it’s only misleading test results and historic class prejudice that make us think differently.
ReplyDeleteIn Britain and the US, it suits us to assume that talent is scarce and that it is therefore critical to identify the supposed one person in 20 who is capable. But in fact talent is not scarce. Most of the other 19 are just as capable in most circumstances, given the opportunity, educational support and the right social networks. Prevailing assumptions, however, lead us effectively to dump the 19, and to see the low status jobs they get (if they get a job at all) as not worthy of enriching with opportunities for professional or personal development.
We have limited awareness of, and generally little interest in fostering, the social and developmental dimensions of employment. Policy mostly ignores the potential of any work experience, provided it is sustained, to support the development of craft, social, civic and professional skills (understanding these in the broadest sense). The effectiveness for the economy of ‘just in time’ working patterns – repeated changing of jobs, short-term team working followed by dispersal, serial employment rather than sustained employment or careers – is exaggerated, while the disadvantages and costs of continual flexibility and volatility are systematically underestimated.
The net effect of this is that the UK and US exemplify a type of capitalism that (despite its rhetoric) is uninterested in developing human capital. The persistent idea that bankers and others in high-paid, privileged roles are by definition much more talented than those in lower status roles is an underlying cause of the recession and likely to mean that even after the recession, high unemployment and/or a significant ‘Macjob’ sector will continue to be toxic features of our economy, sustaining the vicious circle they are symptomatic of.
It would be great to see the banks making more effort to support the communities they are physically based in. If they paid more attention and put more resources into to their civic responsibilities perhaps we wouldn't be in such a financial mess.
Jay Derrick http://jay192192.blogspot.com/
The late lamented Professor Ted Wragg from Exeter University, who used to excoriate back-of-an-envelope educational policymaking every week in the Times Educational Supplement, used to call her Melanie Flips....
ReplyDelete