Child Poverty: Why Youth Must Lead

Teach every child to raise his voice
And then, my brothers, then
Will justice be demanded
By ten million righteous men.
Make them hear you.
When they hear you,
I'll be near you
Again.

 

 

Two headlines from today.  If you commit just a bit of sociology, you might even sense a connection between them:

 

“If ever there was a wakeup call, this would be it,” the mayor-elect says of a report showing city has highest child-poverty rate among Canadian cities.

 

Crippling child poverty.  That's a whole generation growing up in tense climates, without proper nutrition, without proper supports.  But clearly, this is someone else's problem, right?  Those parents should be doing more, working harder, hustling for cash, or something.  It's their own fault, right?  Nothing to do with us.

 

So long as governments keep taxes low and especially provide tax breaks to businesses, that'll create jobs - then people just need to hustle to get them and everything else will be fine.

 

On to story number two:

 

Some 73 students were suspended or expelled for bringing weapons to school over the past school year, up from 42 the previous year.

 

Guns.  In our schools.  What's behind this?  Are backwoods bigots from Pakistan invading our schools and using their mind control powers to make our kids bring weapons to class instead of pens? Is this a reflection of the erosion of Canadian values, or the Americanization of our culture?

 

Here's an idea:

 

Chris Penrose, executive director of Success Beyond Limits, a youth outreach program in the Jane St. and Finch Ave. area, said he is concerned about violence among teens. But he said the weapons spike likely has to do with larger community issues, including poverty, education gaps and youth unemployment.

 

There is plenty of money in Canada right now; there are 118,000 millionaires in Toronto alone.  There are plenty of services - public, not-for-profit, corporate social responsibility - that exist, offering an alphabet soup of services.

 

And of course, there's the prevailing wisdom of our laissez-faire model of capitalism; in Canada, it doesn't matter where you come from, what hurdles are in your way, if you push hard enough you too can be one of the 118,000.  You gotta work hard, be willing to start simple, but above all you gotta hustle.

 

The implication, of course, is that if you don't succeed, it's your own damned fault.

 

Here's a term that will be familiar to pretty much anyone in town with responsibility for managing finances - ROI, Return On Investment.  If you can't see a clear, short-term return on whatever your investment might be, you don't do it.  Low-hanging fruit are therefore preferable; the least effort required for decent gains in short time frames.

 

Let's reframe that a little bit so that we're all on the same page:

 

- If you don't have resources - if you're poor, young, accessibility-challenged, whatever, the pressure is on for you to hustle hard over the long-run if you want to get anywhere in life.

 

- on the other hand, if you've had some success in life, long-term investments aren't worth your time; it's all about the quick-wins, the best bang for your buck, the low-hanging fruit.

 

For the haves, it all makes perfect sense - you spend half your life working really hard to gain success, but when you're there, you put the pressure on everyone else and focus on quick wins.

 

Now, picture you're a child who lives in a marginalized neighbourhood.  Maybe your parents were born somewhere else; maybe they grew up marginalized themselves, but in either case, they've invested time and energy - time away from their kids - and have nothing to show for it.  If anything, the amount of energy they've put into trying to get ahead and the frustration they've faced in not succeeding has bled into home life, which isn't great.

 

This is the lesson a youth can easily take away from this - the people with resources will tell you to hustle, but the truth is it won't get you anywhere.  In fact, this whole "you gotta come to me" approach to success is pretty much an excuse for those with power to stick to their low-hanging fruit and not share their millions.

 

What happens when you feel the people who are supposed to be the movers and shakers in town are making excuses to exclude you and our peers?  How much effort are you willing to put into getting an education, working crap jobs if you can find them, if you are never going to get where they are because society's designed to keep you marginalized?

 

Leadership is solving problems.  The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.  They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care.  Either case is a failure of leadership.

 

This is worth pausing on. 

 

Our society is anti-leadership, from the top down.  We have governments cutting programs, cutting taxes and cutting cheques on things like child care and mental health supports for veterans rather than making long-term investments.  We have bosses that are increasingly pressuring employees to be functionaries, content-producers, client-managers and business developers, yet training is not being provided and salaries aren't matching up. 

 

Even in our education system, teachers are being told it's their job to be educator, mediator, psychologist and content-creator to massive classrooms that include children with learning challenges.  Parents are being told to do more, but do they have the resources, time, or cognitive/emotional bandwidth?  Are they too absorbed with work, or too depressed and frustrated from a lack of work to give their kids what they need?

 

We can look to previous generations and say "they did it, so quit making excuses" - but without asking if it was a good process for them, or how the changing nature of work (who really has a 9 to 5 job anymore?), the rise of mobile comms devices and the soul-sucking challenges of gridlock play a role.

 

There is next to no leadership out there right now.  The people with power and responsibility don't want to be leaders - they don't care about their people's problems.  Sometimes they don't even care about their organizational programs, because they plan to be gone before they blow up (low-hanging fruit, remember)?

 

Or, they don't feel empowered themselves.  This can be justified in many ways (blame being a common one) but the basic fact is that they aren't, in their current condition, up to the challenge of leadership.

 

Some of them actually believe throwing the kids in the deep end is a good strategy, because that's how you identify the strong swimmers.  What happens to everyone else is one of those "not my problem" things.

 

Yet we desperately need leadership right now. 

 

We're hearing the same things from every echelon of society; government is broken.  Infrastructure is screwed.  Organizations are a mess.  Yet those within those institutions will step up to the mic and tell us "everything's fine, we have a bold plan, just trust us and don't mind the man behind the curtain."

 

Back-of-napkin plans are being sold for their commercial value, not because they make sound structural sense.  Marginalized voices are being drowned out with top-down messaging.  Rabble rousers are being silenced through defunding, firing or even eviction.

 

Is it any wonder that youth are taking their cues from the world around them and realizing that if they want to be safe, if they want to have power, they have to be willing to take it through whatever means are available?

 

A kid not investing in schoolwork, being a bully and carrying a weapon aren't defying social rules of engagement - they're picking up on the socio-cultural cues around them responding in kind.

 

This is it; this is where laissez-faire capitalism meets behavioural economics.  In a game of competitive escalation and a reduction in personal investment, it's who's got the biggest stick who wins power and privilege.

 

And as of right now, there is no way, no one who can do anything to stop this trend. 

 

Why?  It's the culture, stupid. 

 

We have a silo-based culture, full stop.  Even those who talk about disrupting silos are really just trying to stuff more stuff into their silos.  Funding is there, but getting it is so competitive that an increasing amount of investment is going into competition, not solutions.  Lost opportunities, duplication, gaps and overlaps are resulting.  There are communities in this city that are glutted with programs and players, and yet the structural issues remain.  Why aren't we learning from this?

 

I question whether the people leading the charge right now are prepared to wrap their heads around the enormity of the challenge.  Even if they do care, the reality they grew up in and are living now is fundamentally different than the one being faced by marginalized youth today.

 

The best champions of any problem are those with lived experience.

 

Which comes to the crux of the matter, the core component of culture change, the disruption that is most difficult but most necessary.

 

The way forward isn't for more downtown adults to impose solutions on youth; if those youth aren't themselves leading the way forward, whatever gets built isn't going to work.

 

This requires a fundamental shift in the way we look at society, at ourselves, and at the role of power.

 

We always look for the best-in-show to invest in; they're most likely to provide the best ROI.  We then take them from wherever they are and put them in environments considered to be good for growth.

 

All of this is backwards.

 

We have to start focusing on those least likely to succeed with minimal effort and put them in the driver's seat.  That means going to their communities, learning to speak their language, taking them serious and treating them seriously.

 

We have to create the best environments where these youth are - in other words, don't bring youth to MaRS, bring MaRS to the youth.  That means more investment of time and interest - which, but its nature, requires motivation to want to make things better, not for a quick ROI, but because it needs done.

 

Which comes to the last, most challenging, most fundamentally important component of our needed culture change.  Right now, we see power as a form of wealth to be accumulated; power is something we want because, when we have it, we can get more through giving less.

 

That stops right now.

 

From this point forward, power isn't something to be obtained; it's blood to be circulated.  The same goes for money.

 

Here is John Tory's challenge - he needs to be the anti-Doug Ford.  He needs to step away from the practices that have brought him success in life, because it's not about him right now.

 

After years of seeking high office of some kind, of being the guy at the top, now is the moment for John Tory to show true leadership by stepping back and becoming a conduit rather than a capstone.

 

The same holds true for every person of influence in this city; councilors, Executive Directors, CEOs and talking heads.  We need to be empowering leaders, not giving orders.  We have to be cultivating solutions from the grassroots rather than imposing infrastructure on top of.

 

This is not a lofty vision, nice words on a page.  It's a fundamental necessity. 

 

Our society is crumbling and the solutions we're coming up with aren't good enough.  We are failing the next generation, and they know it.

 

If we aren't prepared to empower youth to lead, there will come a day not too far from now when they will simply take what they want by force.  That is, after all, the lesson we're teaching them.

 

The choice is ours.  The consequences will be ours.

 

Either way, it will be youth that lead.

Cognitive Poverty and Mapping Solutions

 

Therefore, just as governments tax the poor less, they should also not intellectually strain them when they need help, the study argues. For example, farmers should be sent information about new agricultural practices post-harvest, and those without jobs should not face complicated forms.

 

 

“There are significant numbers of streets in the city that are dictated not by engineering but by geography, and they’re the streets that tend to create the most issues.”

 

 

What does the cognitive atrophy caused by poverty have to do with a data geek mapping bicycle accidents in response to an incident in which his girlfriend was injured?

 

 

Let's start with the cognition part.  If you have average cognitive capacity and I asked you to do some basic financial math - say, a three-digit multiplication question - you could probably work it out in your head without much difficulty.  If, however, I dropped a hammer on your foot, the pain would make the performance of that mental task somewhat more difficult.

 

Now, if we expand the challenge a bit and I task you with working out your monthly income, average monthly expenses and what would be realistic in terms of allocating what's left over to savings vs. fun spending, you could probably sit down and put something on paper.  If I break your leg and then have you sit down and do the same task, the results will be less than spectacular.

 

It's pretty well accepted that pain impedes thought and performance.  But what of psychological discomfort?  Picture you have just heard that your parents died in a car crash and then were asked to perform the multiplication question.  It'd be a bit more of a challenge, wouldn't it?  The same applies to task #2 - if you are living under the constant threat of, say, losing your home (or of knowing where you're going to sleep each night) then task #2 becomes more onerous, too.

 

When it comes to cognitive tasks, psychological discomfort works the same as physical discomfort - it impedes ability.  It's possible to keep at physical tasks (like building widgets) while suffering from psychological distress - for some people, the distraction might even be beneficial.  The more complex

the task is, though, the harder it is to maintain the focus required to do it correctly because a good part of your cognitive processes are fixated on solving the other issue.

 

People living in poverty, near poverty or dealing with either precarious employment (not sure for how long they will get a paycheque or where their next job will be) or highly stressful employment (constant fear of being berated or threatened if they don't do exactly what the boss wants even when those demands aren't clearly articulated) have a harder time focusing. 

 

What they have trouble focusing on will shift depending on where the greatest threat appears to be - if you don't know where you're sleeping at night or where your next meal will come from, that becomes your primary focus - like the body fighting a cold, cognitive energy is drawn from other areas to address the biggest threat.  If you are constantly anxious about your work, you might spend all your energy there, to the detriment of your own wellbeing (skipping lunches, working late into the night, etc.)

 

It's all well and good to get angry at poor people and tell them to just get over themselves and get a job (as a job leads to income which allows for more living security) - I know a lot of hard-core business minded people who say just that.  In practical terms, though, that's just not feasible - just as I can't realistically expect you to do financial planning if you're in physical agony and in the throes of grief, it's not realistic to tell people to get a job without having the basic comforts (let alone training, experience and sales ability) required to get a job.

 

Not when employers want the perfect match from day one and aren't willing to invest in training or employee transition strategies.

 

It's a funny thing, that - every single one of the aggressive, profit-oriented people I know are as functionally fixated on increasing the bottom line in the same way that people without homes are focused on where they're going to sleep at night.  Earning money, pushing their employees to bring in more money becomes the tunnel through which they see the world.  Meanwhile, they frit away tens of thousands of dollars in lost opportunity and lost person hours because they don't take the time to develop internal flow processes or train employees. 

 

We are constantly told that if you want to accomplish anything in life, you have to have a laser-like focus on where you want to be.  Distractions are to be avoided, time is not to be wasted, so on and so forth.  That's true if you're in a race (which the capitalist economy, in essence, is) and the goal is to finish first.

 

If you build more widgets more quickly, you get the promotion.  If you sell more cars in a quarter than the other guys, you get the bonus.

 

The problem is, life is not a race, it's a journey.  There is no smooth track, no level playing field that allows everyone to compete on an even keel.  In fact, there are often puzzles along the way that need a bit of contemplation to overcome.

 

The average person living in poverty can't navigate their way to economic success without support - because the nature of the terrain works to their disadvantage.  The same principle applies to sole-focus oriented manager or functionally-fixed politicians - they are going to find themselves constantly frustrated by the hurdles they face because in their hurry, they have failed to study the terrain.

 

That's where the accident map comes in.

 

Adrian Verster wasn't trying to put more money in his pocket, nor was he worrying about how to keep a roof over his head.  His was not an existential or branding challenge that fostered linear, one-hurdle-at-a-time thinking.  Trying to ensure that something was done about bike accidents and motivated by personal impact, Verster was trying to solve a problem.

 

Problem-solving is a completely different task than function-filling.  It uses different parts of your brain and facilitates a lot of risk-taking - trying one solution to see if it works and if it doesn't, moving on.  Whereas repetitive job interviews or failed business pitches nurture anxiety (they make the functionally fixed destination of meaningful employment or financial success seem further and further out of reach, forcing even more focus), removing non-viable options encourages confidence; eliminating what doesn't work let's you focus on what could.

 

The more non-traditional experience you can bring the table, the more likely you are to look at problems from different perspectives and find innovative solutions that those functionally fixed on a problem might have a harder time fathoming.

 

Whereas the only solution an constantly agitated Rob Ford can think of to solve the bicycle question is to remove them from the road entirely, Vertster took his love of data, devised a way to map out accidents and provide a fresh perspective on the geography of the problem, allowing for solutions to be considered from a broader range of angles.

 

It's a bit like driving - it can be nerve-wracking trying to navigate your way through traffic, one-way streets and all the signs and signals that go with it; put a map in your hand and it becomes an easier task that can be sorted out in advance, facilitating a smoother and more prepared journey.

 

Let's go back to the cognitively strained poor people.  They are focused on the immediate need of getting around the corner right in front of them - say, paying the rent this month.  They cannot spare the energy to look around the corner.  The pain of their poverty constrains them from looking ahead.

 

If you provide that person with a map - say, of existing government services, training opportunities, skills-to-job match and you give them some GPS-like assistance (job counsellors, etc.) and you work on smoothing out the terrain for them (the employment equivalent of paved roads being understanding and accommodative employers) you give them the foresight and comfort they need to confidently navigate the terrain and arrive at the desire destination.

 

Lots of metaphors, lots of analogies - clearly, I'm just writing to further my carpal tunnel.  If I had anything important to say I could synthesize it into a couple bullet points, right?  Busy people don't have the time to digest details.  Give 'em the sugar, the low hanging fruit, and let 'em move on.

 

So let me connect the dots for you:

 

- society does a crap job of accommodating cognition at both ends of the spectrum; this is why we have a shrinking middle class and greater anxiety among the poor and greater frustration among the wealthy

 

- telling poor people to just "get a job" is like telling wealthy people to just "donate more money to charity"; a short-term focus on keeping roofs over heads or keeping shareholders happy negates the cognitive ability to think laterally, systematically.

 

- narrowing focus, reducing accommodation and increasing time pressure does exactly the opposite of what we want it to do - we don't become more successful, we become more short-sighted.  That's never a good thing in the long run, as we're clearly seeing.

 

- solving problems (complex math equations, financial planning, figuring out how to get a job or innovating new products for emerging demands) requires a completely different set of motivation and supports than does race-winning.

 

- environmental assessments - knowing the landscape - makes planning easier.  It enables you to put the right tools in your box before you set out.

 

- it isn't enough to motivate people to get jobs or to meaningfully hire with carrots and sticks; you have to design-think your way across the gap, which is a two-way effort.

 

Or, to make it really simple for you - it pays to think ahead and to live consciously.

 

Here's How It Begins

Two stories I've just read, indicating the next slip into the spiral:

Rob Ford:

He said he wasn't sure why the statement was made. "I don't understand conceptually, at all, because it really speaks to perhaps some who may not be fully cognisant as to what some of the real challenges are," he said. "I would think that either the mayor has spoken in a moment of just emotion but I would think that the notion of immigration or immigrants being the problem is the wrong notion."

Jason Kenney:

“When the minister goes to the House of Commons … and they get centralized into the minister more and more of the power, it does give you concern because then you no longer have a parliamentary democracy, you are moving more and more towards an autocracy with power centred into the minister’s hands.”

This won't end well - not for anyone.  Sadly, it's those who think they can ignore past lessons and make up their own realities that are the ones doomed to repeat history.

Be mindful

Three stories that jump out at me today...

Former Ornge employees have described Mazza as "impressive," "brilliant" and a "visionary," but also a tyrant whose volatile temper exploded when they didn't do what he wanted.

Mazza was on mental health leave until now - psychiatrists deemed him medically unfit to testify.  Of course, there will be those who say that's all just a ruse, an excuse to avoid scrutiny.  They should check out the CAMH campaign around mental illness denial.

"I've travelled across this country and what I've seen more than anything is anger. We have angry people."

Angry people in Canada?  There's a growing trend of this fact making the news.  Of course, it's sensationalist (ie, twigs our emotions) but it's none the less true.  Stephen Harper has been waging a fear campaign for his entire stint as PM and now it's coming back to haunt him.  Harper's a decent tactician and certainly strategized his political rise carefully enough - why didn't he see this coming?

Ford decried the “disgusting act of senseless violence,” but stuck to his mantra that “the best social program around is a job.”

Mayor Ford's solution for gang violence?  Declare a war on it.  A war on war has never been a particularly successful approach, but Ford is certain it will work this time.  He doesn't believe in proactively supporting people to help provide them choices other than violence, though - that's too totalitarian in his view.

Is there a common thread to these stories?  I believe there is.  Until we take the time to understand what makes behaviour tick and consciously wrest control from gut reaction, we will be doomed to repeat history.

Martin Luther King on Poverty and the Social Organism

"...it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation."

     - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

He refers to Vietnam, but in a speech about poverty.  That's something too many people with power refuse to see - the more you close yourself off from poverty, the greater violence will become. 

A hand can't feed itself - it can only gain strength by supporting the whole.  Society is exactly like that.