I recall a visit I made a couple of years ago to the home of a low income family with whom I had spent over two full years assisting as a social worker.  I was delivering a donated computer so that the family, which included a bright sixteen year old high school student, a struggling seven year old and their semi-literate mother, could get internet access.  I had promised them a computer because I found that even grade school teachers make the middle class assumption that there is a computer in the home, and high school teachers regularly give homework assignments to be done via the internet; yet, this family, like many with whom I worked, did not have internet nor even a computer.  I had recently received word that the younger child would be retained due to a lack of academic progress.

As I spoke I found myself, not for the first time, putting the burden of the younger child’s success on her older sister. I did not like doing that but the older sister was the only one in the home capable of providing the daily assistance the seven year old needed if she were to have any chance of academic success.  I had, by that point, been pressing this child to help her younger sister for two years.  It wasn’t fair, I didn’t like putting that responsibility on a teenager, but I saw no other hope for her little sister.   I knew full well that it was her mother’s responsibility to provide such assistance, but in this case, a single mother who is low functioning and semi-literate was simply not up to the task.

It is a trite cliché, but true none the less: life isn’t’ fair. Continue reading “Of Opportunity” →