Columnist's simplistic view of poverty

"Poverty is no mystery, and it's easily avoidable," Walter E. Williams wrote in the Daily Herald. If it were so avoidable, then why has poverty existed for so long all over the world, as well as in the United States? Williams' road map - "complete high school; get a job, any kind of job; get married before having children, and be a law-abiding citizen" - is good advice, but simplistic.

Recent events highlight the discouraging disparity in school resources across the country - and within our state. One can "complete high school" without the basic level skills to succeed. Schools with few supplies, limited resources, underpaid teachers needing to work extra jobs, large class size, and crumbling facilities do not serve students well.

Learning also requires good health, safety, accessible food, clean water - as well as the belief that staying in school will improve your life. One of my intelligent 15-year-old students from an impoverished city neighborhood said he had believed that "schools were just the government's way to keep kids off the streets until they were 16."

Getting a job requires jobs to be available and accessible. It also require skills that are best learned by knowing employed members of the community who can model what it takes to get and keep a job. If the most accessible - and lucrative - job is selling drugs at the street corner, that may seem to be a real choice.

Poverty is real and complex, and not solely the fault of the individual. Solutions need to go beyond Williams' "road map." We may "own" ourselves, but some of us are born into families and communities that help our hard work pay off. And some of us have many road blocks to "avoiding" poverty.

Paula Altekruse

St. Charles