pressures on kids and families

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Home : 2002 : August : 16

pressures on kids and families
By Kristina

My school has an enormous range of students' family income levels. If you have low-income students at your school, one thing I would caution you about is making too big a deal out of "who brings in the most." The General
Mills products that carry box tops tend to be relatively expensive and are generally not staple items.
Some of you are probably rolling your eyes at what seems like a minor thing, but I know kids whose parents rely on the food bank towards the end of the month. Their parents are definitely not buying Fruit Roll-Ups and Granola Bites.
We have candy sales, wrapping paper sales and

magazine sales, and we make a big deal out of the kids who sell the most (they're almost always the upper-middle-class kids whose parents bought a bunch of the stuff or took the brochure to the office and got their coworkers to buy it). We also have incentives for students whose families purchase the most scrip, and again, they're always the higher-income kids.

The kids who can't participate are already very aware of the differences between themselves and the more privileged kids. I cringe every time I see our very well-meaning PTA set up another incentive program that reminds the kids of those differences.

I'm all for fund-raisers, including Box Tops for Education, but I do think they need to be conducted with sensitivity toward those kids whose families just don't have the means to participate. A school-wide goal, with a celebration for everyone once it's met, seems much more appropriate to me than a competition to see who can contribute the most.