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Some kids in Edmond learned about being poor
Feb 6
2013
When I think of teenagers, I usually think of all the contributions they make, like their charm and wit, as well as their perspective and sense of propriety. Just kidding. I don’t think these things. And if you know me at all, you know that I’m not a fan of teenagers. If I see a group of them nearby, I avoid them at all costs. Not because they have cooties, but most likely because they’re going to steal my handbag and then use my credit cards to buy bath salts and tons of neon-colored rubber bracelets.
When I think of Edmond teens, I remember my days back at good ol’ ENHS. It wasn’t so long ago that I, myself, was a teen. I still remember it as if I were still crying in bathroom stalls and getting rocks thrown at me for refusing to help a bully cheat on a science test. But perhaps what I remember most about being an Edmond teen was thinking that I was poor, only to grow up and realize how incredibly well off my family is, just not in Edmond terms.
Allow me to clarify. In the parking lot at ENHS, there were plenty of normal cars, like my Toyota Carolla. But there were also Land Rovers, Hummers, so many Mustangs you wouldn’t believe it, a Mercedes, and quite a few BMWs. It goes without saying that none of these cars belonged to the teachers. So it’s easy to see how my perception of money could be skewed. That’s why I thought it was odd that the Oklahoma Department of Commerce would stage a “poverty simulation” with Edmond teens.
According to NewsOK.com:
EDMOND — For part of one night, more than 100 teens gathered at St. Monica’s Catholic Church got a taste of what it might be like to be poor. And they didn’t like it one bit.
During a “poverty simulation” Wednesday, they learned about challenges faced daily by thousands of people in Oklahoma County. The program is sponsored by the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, a state agency that uses the exercise to heighten awareness of the day-to-day poverty they say 11.8 percent of Oklahomans experience.
Rebekah Zahn-Pittser, a program planner for the Commerce Department, laid out the scenario for participants ranging in age from seventh to 12th grades. Participants were gathered into homes — or circles of four chairs making up a family. They were given name tags and a scenario of their family’s challenges.
One “family” was headed by an unemployed information technology professional. His unemployment benefits were drying up while his wife worked at a job paying $8.50 an hour.
Some families had children with serious medical conditions. Others were told they had homes needing repairs but no funds available.
The youths were given a list of rules — requiring them to pay with fake money for utilities, child care, mortgage and other expenses.
Desks around the room were staffed with adults who handled the roles of bankers, grocers, school teachers, state welfare workers, pawn brokers and police. The youth went around to the various desks either paying bills, going to school or hoping to get more money.
Now, why did they do this with Edmond kids? Is it because they’re trying to reach out to future members of the Tea Party and teach them empathy before they’re too far gone? Is it because they wanted to find a concentration of teens that most likely had never experienced anything like this?
In all fairness, I think showing teenagers other perspectives outside of the ones they know is something that’s important. Otherwise, you wind up with close-minded sociopaths. But there is something a little disingenuous about a poverty simulation. It’s like each year at OU, we try to explain to the Greek organizations that having a “Shackathon” to raise money for Habitat for Humanity is a bad idea. But they don’t get that making a bunch of paper shacks on the South Oval is crass and degrading.
So, for the final line of the piece to be a girl stating “being poor is just terrible”, one might think that these kids would need a little more perspective than say, and evening that is basically the equivalent of a church lock in. Plus, we’ve written about what happens when you try to drop some knowledge on rich kids. I shall happily await the piece in The Oklahoman about teens who think that poverty is not everyone’s problem.
Whoa whoa WHOA, lady. You had a CAR?? I had a little scooter I got as a senior in high school (EMHS, back when ENHS was a school called Sequoyah that I attended in 6th & 7th grades). It weighed less than I did. I could actually pick it up. Which given I had a scooter, was the ONLY thing I was picking up back then.
next up a program showing kids from Edmond how to “survive” in the real world by transplanting them into say Capitol Hill High school for a week.
sounds like a very interesting idea.
+1 That was my HS – I went there and never got stabbed!
I’m sick of Derps telling me that all poor people are impoverished because they are lazy, or make bad decisions. I don’t doubt that’s true for some, perhaps many; but not all. Sometimes the deck is just stacked against ya.
i always thought it amusing that these youth were sent through programs like this because they were “at risk” when the real at risk kids were ones from troubled homes and the more urban inner city.
Example, while working for the department of Corrections, they brought in some “troubled teens” who were on the road to nowhere. They had a “scared straight” style program in place wherein the kids were put in a cell to see what prison was like. Reality, the kids were taken to a part of the now vacant west cellhouse at OSP where some of the doors still worked, placed in the cell and door closed for 1 minute (oooh scary) then the more salty of the teens were placed with inmate big brother types to be scared back to the path of righteousness and good. Reality, they put them in a big open room with trustees where the worst offender was in there for bad checks. then after all of this traumatization they went through, horror of horrors, they were given a pizza party. Yep after that one of the kids told the reporter they were so scared they would never do wrong again.
when i was in high school, they did something similar with our sophomore class only we had guys in there for assault, one for murder, etc. who basically told us how our asses would be bought and sold for cartons of smokes. one of the girls in our class was so upset over getting told this she broke down crying and was allowed to leave. later on under threat of lawsuit, the school board made the principal step down over this.
point is whether it is a scared straight program or make believing you are poor, when it comes to kids from a better district like Edmond, they are going to put on the kid gloves and soft sell it to them. one of the “homes” should have been the family having nothing but a sharpie and a piece of cardboard with directions to some of OKC’s affluent overpasses.
In defense of my Greeks, camping out in tents made from designer shoe boxes and spare 20 dollar bills was a excellent excuse to drink from flasks, harass people walking to class on the South Oval, and sleeping under the stars with your crush without having to do a walk of shame the next morning
+1
youre my hero for this comment, lololol
It seems like it would be more effective if they exposed these kids to this and told them 9 out of 10 of them are like this because they made crappy choices or didn’t work/plan enough. The other one just got screwed.
Yes, remind these kids never to make the crappy decisions of not growing up in Edmond, losing their job or suffering from a serious medical condition.
Of course no one from Edmond ever made a crappy decision, got sick or lost their jobs. Did you ever stop to consider that the reason successful people succeed (no matter where they live) is that they don’t quit, wait on people to bail them out or sit around and let life beat them down? Of course you haven’t.
Please go back to 1760 to espouse your work hard, self made man theory….it worked so well to keep the poor where they belonged. Just work hard for your $7.25/ hour….it will all work out somehow. What? You only work 40 hours a week and have to feed 2 kids and have no health insurance? Poor decisions….you and those little brats deserve it.
I live in Edmond and the kids at enhs worship mustangs. They’re all a bunch of wannabe hicks.
Did any of the scenarios involve a scarcely sentient governor who won’t expand Medicaid to include them, hayseed state pols claiming they use State assistance to buy drugs or lazy rednecks whose financial straits are caused by devoting most of their disposable income to payments on new F-150s saying they’re stealing their jobs? Because that would make it more realistic.
All they have to do is bring in former sports jocks from 20 years ago who thought they would become rich playing pro sports. Show them the sliding graph of “this is where i was in high school, big man on campus….this is where I got an offer to play NAIA ball….this is where I thought I was too good for NAIA ball….this is where I became a statistic…..”