I’m Sorry You’re Poor, But It’s Your Fault
How We Have Come to Blame the Victims of Repression and Disaster
“‘This is the strangest thing of all about Khaufpur, that people put up with so much. Take a look. It’s not just blacked out streets and killer traffic, people in this city tolerate open sewers, garbage everywhere, poisoned wells, poisoned babies, doctors who don’t do their jobs, corrupt politicians, thousands of sick that no one seems to care about. But wait, let someone come along with an open-hearted offer of help, these same citizens can’t tolerate it, in fact find it so intolerable they must mount a boycott. People in this city must be either blind or mad. I don’t get the way Khaufpuris think.’”
This quote was derived from the book Animal’s People, which was written in 2007 and alludes to the chemical explosion that occurred in Bhopal in 1984, which left many innocent lives to deal with the damage they had no part in creating. In the reading, an American woman by the name of Ellie arrives in a small Indian town named Khaufpur. The town was affected by what they refer to as the “Kampani” and Ellie tries to help these people who are still suffering years later from various medical conditions due to the explosion. She cannot fathom why people do not accept her free medical help and why the people refuse to associate themselves with her, so she comes up with the conclusion that the people of Khaufpur do not want to be helped. Although it may seem like these people do not want help, it is far from the reality that Ellie does not see.
Everyone wants help. Everyone wants help because everyone seeks relief from pain and stress. If we do not feel good, we want medicine. If we cut ourselves, we look for a bandage. If our body is acting out of the norm, we see a doctor. Humans seek out relief and happiness, and this group of people are no different. You see, what Ellie did not understand is that these people desperately wanted help. They were seeking justice and wanted to know they were going to be compensated for their troubles and the lost they experienced. They were going to the court house constantly to see if maybe they would win the case against the “Kampani” this time. MAYBE they will hear that it is not their fault, but rather the “Kampani” who decided to come into their small village, create a chemical factory, and who ran away when they realized they made a huge, and costly, mistake. But for them, it was only hope.
There’s a term used in Psychology called “learned helplessness”. According to David G. Meyers and C. Nathan DeWall, the writers of the eleventh edition of Psychology, they describe learned helplessness as “ the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.” This term refers to how people stop trying to pursue help for a situation, even though they are offered the help or have the chance to escape. We see this in people who are in abusive relationships, people with addictions, and animals that are beaten and cower from their abusive owners rather than attack. This idea of learned helplessness is why the people of Khaufpur do not try to reach out to Ellie. They are so tired of the maybe’s, of trying to keep hope after twenty years of nothing, that when someone like Ellie comes in and WANTS to help them, they push it aside as if it is some cruel, sick joke.
This idea of learned helplessness and people “not wanting” help has become more and more apparent in the United States as well. One area is our school system. Children in our school system have started suffering due to budget cuts, bigger classes, more homework, and less staff. Combine this with a low income and parents who are constantly working to make ends meet, and you have yourself a child who is more worried about what they are going to eat, where they are going to sleep, and what others will think about them rather than worrying about school. We would think that these children could go to their teachers and counselors for help, right? Well, that’s wrong.
According to an article by The Hetchinger Report, school counselors are oftentimes the first ones to be cut out of schools when there are budget cuts. Why? Well, many people feel that they are not as important to students. After all, they are only there to talk right? Wrong. One child by the name of Mariano Almanza mentions that he goes to his counselor in order to relieve the tension of high school pressures such as homework, college applications, and the pressure of deciding what he wants to do for the rest of his life. He, along with others, also go to their counselor for college advice since many students are first generation students that cannot ask their parents about the college application experience. Not only that, counselors offer an ear to children going through depression, suicidal thoughts, who are in abusive household, who need someone to talk to, and they offer resources such as prevention of pregnancy, abuse, or an outlet. With a counselor going from having an average of 250 students, to counselors having an average of up to 760 students to talk to and manage, it is not surprising why many students feel they cannot go to their counselors to get the right advise on life when no one else can offer it.
In the past few years, there have been more and more school shootings occurring in the United States. Oftentimes, they are sick, troubled, young men who feel that if they kill others, they are going to be remembered forever or will be instantly famous. Many people, like CNN, believe that it is super easy to prevent this from happening and have come to criticize teachers and students for not doing more. One way CNN believes teachers can prevent shootings is to “Find ways to better listen to students and teachers who are aware of threats”. So in other words, the fault falls on the student and staff. Since we apparently do not need counselors, teachers supposedly have so much free time, in the eyes of critics. It isn’t like each student has an average of about 17.5 hours of homework a week. And it’s not like teachers have an average of 20–30 students per classroom and an average of 3–8 classes a day. And if you do the math, it isn’t like teachers have about 1,050–4,200 hours worth of homework to grade per week, plus creating lesson plans, plus forking over $500- $1000 extra to make sure their classroom will have enough materials to get through the school year. So yeah, California high school teachers totally have the time to listen to their students and get them the proper help and resources while also maintaining a classroom. Especially when their income is between 48,930- $101,660 and the low-income requirement in California in 2017 is $64, 300, plus whatever school loans they are still paying off. And let’s be realistic, if a teacher is making $101,660, they are obviously not working in any low-income areas. We seem to blame out teachers when students aren’t learning, when a student creates a problem or learns bad behaviors, and we tend to criticize teachers when they try to step in and say no to a student, when they send our bad reports, or when they try to offer help like a simple car ride home instead of a student taking the bus.
As a society, we seem confused as to why our children are acting out in such violent ways. We wonder why they aren’t taking the “help” and “education” we offer them. We wonder why other countries hate us and why when we try to set foot in their land, we are met with hostility and hatred, and yet we strongly miss the underlying problem. Just like the people in Bhopal, our children need a better solution than a life of loans. They need better advice than “suck it up” or “others have it worse”. We need to stop blaming our teachers and students, and stop letting bigots like Betsy DeVos privatize our schools because they believe a businessman can run a school better than an educator. Those same businessmen and women who want to privatize our schools are the same ones who believe that more money should be invested in our military than education. Who’s to say that although our schools will be glamorous and huge, that the quality of education that our children will receive won’t lower? After all, charter schools are private institutions who can teach whatever curriculum they want, and since that curriculum will be run by businessmen who see nothing but money, our children will only receive as much education as they pay for.
