It’s difficult to understand the implications of poverty when you have lived with the benefit of privilege. Middle class people regularly fall into this trap but there’s plenty of ignorance and privilege within the working classes too.
On my first day at senior school my mom gave me a pep talk before leaving home. “I won’t demand that you pass exams or get good grades, the only thing I ask is that you stay in school. Don’t go off playing truant with the naughty kids. Stay in school. Get an education.”
Truancy was rife at my school. The typical class size was 30 but on wet days, when the truants didn’t fancy a walk to the shops, there would be 35 in the classroom and the teacher would have to send out for extra chairs.
Most truants slipped out through a hole in the fence after morning assembly. However, one lad in my form group rarely bothered turning up for registration. We’d see him maybe once a month.
Someone jibed, “fucking hell, Chris, I thought you’d left!”
“Nah, still here,” he replied sheepishly.
His reply sounded callous. I marked him out as one of those rogues who didn’t care what others thought about his behaviour.
He stuck in my memory because he lived in a block of flats at the back of the school. He could point at his bedroom window from the school playground. I wondered why he failed to make it to school given how close he lived.
Near the end of second year he started turning up regularly at school and hanging out with my group of friends.
I asked a friend, “Do we want Chris hanging out with us? He’s a wrong-un. He rarely comes into school.”
My friend replied, “Well, his mom died last week.”
I took this to mean: Go easy on him, his mom died last week. Give the guy a break.
But what my friend meant was: He’s coming into school because his mom died last week.
His mom was dying of cancer, he had to stay at home and look after her. Now she’s dead he can come to school.
Wooosh, over my head.
That missed me, by a fucking country mile.
In my world my parents looked after me. My dad went out to work, my mom cooked my meals and washed my clothes. This is how the world works, no?
As a child you accept the world you live in. There is a level of naivety. Children don't have the life experience to know the challenges that other people face.
I haven’t experienced being a child helper. I can’t appreciate how caring for your parents affects your school work. I imagine your homework gets put to one side, your education obviously suffers but I can’t fully understand the turmoil of moral obligations when your dying mother cries out in pain as you head out the door to school. How does a young child reach a decision on whether to stay home?
I recognise the privilege but still don’t understand the implications.
Everybody has a different experience of life. Everybody thinks their own experience is normal, humble and far from extravagant. Only a small amount of curiosity and interest in other people is required to notice those who are less fortunate.
While I do not believe that decision-makers need to have experienced suffering to make decisions that impact the poor, they do need to take advice from people who are at the coal face because without first-hand experience it’s impossible to know the implications.