Where will I sleep tonight? Are my siblings and I going to be safe? Do we have to go another night hungry? These questions are constantly at the forefront of the minds of those who deal with unstable living conditions. You know what would be a great solution? Let’s have these kids wake up at 7 in the morning, go to school for 8 hours, and bombard them with as much information as possible.
Schools have gotten it all wrong. They’ve neglected to start the academic process by focusing on basic human necessities. According to Saul McLeod in his article on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, he says that “Needs lower down on the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to needs higher up.” This bottom rung is comprised of what many take for granted, those “Basic Needs” they’re already secure in: food, water, warmth, and rest. It then continues upward to include safety, love and belonging, esteem, and the final level is self-actualization (2020).
How is one able to achieve their full potential at the very top when they can’t even get past this first rung? It would be exhausting to sit in a class all day attempting to learn when all you can think about how bad it is at home. The abuse, the lack of food, the filth, the absence of people or shelter that you have to go back to every day after school. In other words, there’s no way someone can effectively retain any information when they aren’t being taken care of properly. One statistic from the National Center for Children in Poverty shows that, in the United States, “43% of children live in low-income families” (2019). With almost half of the country’s students coming from these conditions, it is completely illogical to assume that they’re capable of narrowing in on school when they’re too busy worrying about the difficulties at home.
We must take a step back and look through the eyes of individuals who struggle in school because of challenging life circumstances. This is exactly what the MindSage lessons will allow you to do, to view school as if you were someone just trying to make it through everyday life, yet are still held to the same academic standards as everyone else. Looking in particular at the lesson on Emotional Intelligence, a great point was brought up about how emotions can prevent people from learning. If you’re feeling scared and uneasy, which many kids are who have daily hardships, you aren’t going to care about what your teacher is saying. To all the school districts out there…now is your time to ignore all of the academic checkboxes you have to mark off and instead pay attention to these kids who are just wanting to have their basic needs met first.
-Zoe Palmer, MindSage Intern
