POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: How Do You Convince The Rich That The Poor Aren't "just lazy"?

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Eighteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have three grandchildren, (with a fourth on-the-way!) the oldest of which will soon finish his first year in high school, one smack in the center of Middle School; the third almost done with kindergarten. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other publications as a slushpile reader, and sometime essay contributor to Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/. These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.

I just finished a short story that asks the above question.

At this time, the short story’s (6000 words) title is Down Below the Industrial Nightclub and Tandoori Inn and it takes place on the Mars of my most recent novel (if you’re interested in it, here’s a link so you can test read the first two chapters for free: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2026/02/martian-holiday-read-chapters-1-2.html

Anyway, Down Below the INTI was hard to write because it intersected with something I’ve experienced both as I grew up and seen more times than I’d like to admit during my decades as a science teacher and guidance counselor: wealthy people (like myself later in life), and students, teachers, staff, and the community as it regarded the school I was teaching at from the outside.

The details were often used against students (and sometimes staff) to explain how we couldn’t really expect much from our students because… “Well…you know…they’re…up…poor. Definitely at a disadvantage is life! Surely that’s something you have to deal over there!”

The details? “Robbinsdale Cooper Senior High School in New Hope, Minnesota, has a diverse student body where roughly 70% to 82% of students are students of color and about 70% qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Racial breakdown of the 1,396 students: Black: 38.2%; Hispanic: 25.0%; White: 17.7%; Two or More Races: 9.8%; Asian: 8.7%; American Indian/Alaska Native: 0.5%; Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.1% Economic Need: About 70% of students receive free or reduced-price lunch, which is a standard measure of low-income household status in public schools.

The “expectation” of the public – even the parents of our students – was that Cooper was going to be a “bad” school. Why? Because of the socioeconomic data above.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t graduate from Cooper – I graduated from Park Center High School (which was a BRAND NEW (opened 1971) high school in a largely new First Ring Suburb of Minneapolis. The houses were nice, the owners (some of them CAPABLE of owning a house for the first time in their lives (aka as my parents) and it had EVERYTHING possible for a Late 20th Century High School could have: a “Media Center”, carpeted classrooms and “cafeteria” with four-sided TABLES; a “sunken gymnasium”; modular construction; AIR CONDITIONING ALL THE TIME; and BLOCKS of lockers rather than hallways lined with them. State-of-the-art laboratories; and more startling than anything else… A COMPUTER IN EVERY CLASSROOM! Incredible.

I had expectations when I got a job at Cooper – that it would be tough. Our “sister-high-school” Armstrong (yes, named after the Apollo astronaut, Neil A. Armstrong) was the “sweetheart” of Robbinsdale Schools and every expectation of success and greatness was laid on them…

But…it was easy to convince the public that Armstrong would be a school of successful FUTURE architects, astronauts, engineers, doctors, and all the other high profile careers. Cooper would supply the world with construction workers, store clerks, and welfare recipients…

The expectation then was easy to translate from Cooper students were “lazy”; Armstrong students were “hard-working and successful”.

How did we change that – after ten years at the middle school feeding Cooper, I was able to get the job helping to SHAPE the student body at Cooper; eventually arriving at pulling my own kids from Park Center to Cooper for their four years of high school – because I believed that success was less about annual household income…

Among other things, teachers who believed in the inherent intelligence of Cooper kids despite the common-factor of similar socioeconomic factors worked to get Cooper certified as BOTH an International Baccalaureate school and (eventually) an Advance Placement school. When Cooper was IB certified, teachers at Armstrong FIRMLY believed that they didn’t NEED no fancy program to be the best in the Robbinsdale School District (Robbinsdale Cooper High School officially became certified as an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School in July 1997, and Advance Placement certified in the early 2000’s. Armstrong became and AP-certified school a few years later. Both schools have the AP program, only Cooper has IB and AP…

The staff talked the school up. Were there violent incidents at Cooper? Yep, there were. Teenagers who don’t have easy access to both higher expectations and more enthusiastic support like to get into trouble.

Of course, teenagers who have easy access to both higher expectations and enthusiastic support get into trouble as well. They fail classes, have to do make up in summer school, and drop out. Teenager who don’t have these drop out as well. They’re kids.

The question is: HOW DO WE CONVINCE THE RICH THAT THE POOR AREN’T JUST LAZY? Part of the answer is advocating for the poor. Another is by giving the poor the same opportunities that the rich have – that was one of our main tools at Cooper. The facts don’t support this myth, either. We’ve all heard people say, ‘If they worked hard, they’d succeed.’ [“Like I do!” is always implied.] “Politicians warn that such programs will reduce incentives to work.”

“I think that’s one of those sayings like “All politicians are liars.” FACT: “Work requirements rarely incentivize the poor to work any longer or harder than they already do, according to a Harvard research study. The truth is people in the US work hard, sometimes multiple jobs, and still have trouble covering their rent, utilities, health care, and groceries to last the week.” (https://www.familyhealthproject.org/debunking-the-myth-the-poor-are-lazy)

Anyway – idiots will always think idiot thoughts: “I can’t go to college! I’m poor!” is one of those idiot thoughts. “All poor people are just lazy!” is another one of those things that idiots think. Neither one is true. The real challenge is shouting those idiot ideas down whenever we hear them. As a high school counselor, I’ve done it before. Even as a normal person, you can make a difference, too.

And the connection to Down Below the Industrial Nightclub and Tandoori Inn? Parts of Human DNA have been removed from clones that are then declassified "Human" and considered expendable Inti (Introns removed during the cloning process...but you'll find that out when you read the story once I sell it!)

Inspiration: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2019/02/possibly-irritating-essays.html

Image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNrJW4Wk_pI