This is probably true, although there are programs such as Upward Bound and College Summit that start working with kids as early as middle school to prepare them for college. Upward Bound has been around for decades and is a good program. One of my sorority sisters was in it and ended up getting her doctorate in psychology. </p>
<p>Speaking of which, I mentioned upthread that many Appalachian parents frown on their kids “getting above their raisin” but not all of them. I had three sorority sisters - I’ll call them Mary, Edith and Sybil - who were from McDowell County, one of the top 10 poorest counties in the United States. They all majored in education, I think in part because the only professional women they had ever seen were teachers. Mary finished college with her teaching degree, married and had a daughter. She was widowed at 32, moved back to McDowell and is teaching at one of the high schools there. Edith graduated and moved to Florida, where she now has her doctorate in psychology. Sybil struggled a bit, taking some breaks from school, but she eventually graduated. She taught for a few years before getting her cosmotology license and changing careers. So it can be done, but it’s harder for those who don’t come from a middle-class background where college is a given. </p>
<p>Whatever else it does seem like the health, dentistry and education programs at least keep kids “in the game” long enough to hopefully have more opportunities down the road. I imagine that with geographic isolation including the high cost of travel kids would be a lot less likely to be able to even imagine another path. It would be tough, too, if another path almost certainly means leaving your family (assuming they aren’t the toxic ones) and place. At least with urban poverty a person can move up without becoming completely disconnected. I would imagine that would be hard to not have that grounding if you are used to such a strong sense of place and family history. Where I live even the more isolated resource based communities haven’t been there THAT long. I guess you could say ‘generations’ if the turn around is short, but not nearly as long in one place as people in Eastern Kentucky and other like places.</p>
<p>The college version of Upward Bound is Student Support Services (dumb name as many people conflate it with colleges’ own student affairs.) SSS and UB are parts of the TRiO programs, federal programs for supporting the education of low income and/or first gen students. I worked for an SSS program for ten years. The school it was situated in was an urban school, but I did work with at least one Appalachian student, and also students from other rural areas. SSS gives students academic counseling, FA advice, all the usual college help (tutoring, career counseling, study tips, advising advice,etc), but more than that, a counselor whose sole job is to help the student negotiate college and beyond. I used to advertise it as the Got Your Back program.</p>
<p>Anyone who has, or knows, students who could use and qualify for the services should look for these. They’re not on every campus, but theres probably about a thousand of them nationwide.</p>
<p>If we believe that intelligence is genetic is discrimination against the dumb any worse than discrimination over race? Or if we believe it’s only partially genetic is it any worse than discrimination over skin color? </p>
You could take note of how often people who were born with inherent superior intelligence talk about “meritocracy.” Those same people, however, often complain about athletic scholarships. Hmmm.</p>
<p>On accented speech - there is a big difference between a regional accent and use of colloquialisms and not knowing (or seeming to know) standard American English sentence construction. I don’t pretend to be a linguist, but as a casual observer from the PNW who calls a customer service number and doesn’t know the racial/ethnic/regional profile of the agent, a person can ‘sound black’ or ‘sound southern’ without sounding less intelligent or knowledgeable about the matter at hand. If a person is speaking what my husband (hails from mill town adjacent to some isolated resource based communities) calls ‘inbred as a second language’ I am going to judge. It might not be ‘dumb’ at all . . . maybe it’s just lack of readiness. However, lack of readiness for interacting with the outside world in an employment or academic setting is a handicap. A striver can take advantage of available programs to help. However, whether one comes from an urban ghetto or a rural ghetto a person who wants to improve their lot in life needs to accept that clinging too strongly to some cultural affectations is going to be limiting. Again . . . so as not to get jumped, I am NOT talking about losing accents. </p>
<p>This topic is strangely interesting to me but I come in knowing next to nothing about it so I read several articles and blog posts etc. along with watching a few video pieces. One thing that I really noticed reading the user comments is that there seems to be a strong contingent that isn’t interested in “betterment” of the moving up and out variety. To the extent that this contingent wants jobs, they want them to be coal mining and they want them to be still in their immediate community. They weren’t talking about picking up and following the energy industry to the Dakotas or anything. There also seems to be a strong (or at least vocal) contingent who blame the government for creating their own dependency on government programs. Kind of a conspiracy where jobs are taken and benefits given in their place for some unknown but purposeful reason.</p>
Again, welcome to my world. You’d think the world would come to an end if someone had to leave the holler and move someplace else for work. In the 50s and 60s, many people did go to Michigan and northern Ohio, and it was not unheard-of for some families to return to West Virginia to visit every weekend - sometimes driving 12 hours each way.
And ITA about accents vs. Standard English. A person can “sound” African-American, New England Yankee or whatever - it’s the lack of use of Standard English that marks a person as “less than.” </p>