Mothers are viewed as the people who are raising future citizens of Canada; therefore, their parenting practices are being targeted for intervention by civic organizations funded by the state. In this article, I argue that modernity narratives and neoliberalism approaches to mothering inform parenting education classes for Somali refugee women to…

A full stomach and clear mind are prerequisites for learning. Many children who live in poverty have neither. And the number of children who might be considered "food challenged" is growing at an alarming rate. This economic reality translates into ever-growing challenges for the public education system, which already struggles to provide all the…

Students who had enrolled in an innovative university-based service-learning class were asked to reflect on their expectations prior to mentoring youth attending high-poverty high schools, and whether they believed they had met these expectations post-mentoring. Findings indicated that students primarily were motivated by learning about the…

Reviews literature on conceptions that adults and children have about poverty. It reveals society's predisposition to "blame the victim" which provides a moral justification for disenfranchisement of millions from the economic mainstream. Implications of this stereotyping about the poor being cultivated in children, and designing…

How middle class children interpret public messages about class status was studied through interviews with 24 children ages 5 to 14. Children, especially at younger ages, generally faulted individuals for creating their poverty, just as they credited the wealthy with creating their own prosperity. However, they generally interpreted the wealthy as…

The language in which we discuss public issues and public officials subtly evokes problematic beliefs about the nature of social problems, their causes, their seriousness, our success or failure in coping with them, which of their aspects are remediable, which cannot be changed, and what impact they have on which groups of people. Social cues…