The Editor, Sir:

Attention is drawn to a front page story in The Sunday Gleaner captioned: 'Too Poor to Learn'. It cites information drawn from studies done by Drs. Marigold Thorburn and Maureen Samms-Vaughn as well as data collected from the 2006 Survey of Living Conditions.

What is new? They have said what teachers in this country have been saying all along. A child who is suffering from the effects of poverty cannot learn efficiently or effectively. Teachers are continually blamed for the poor performance of children. Is it because we are not consultants why our on-site knowledge is not considered valuable?

Let me hasten to say that there are shortfalls and pitfalls in education that teachers have created and must fix. However, we did not create poverty and should not be made to take the blame for it. A child enters school when he is four or six years old. He is not just malnourished (getting the wrong nutrition) but undernourished(not getting enough of his nutritional needs).

This child is usually neither aware nor alert. He is not easily stimulated; his fine and gross motor skills take a longer time to develop and are not as smooth and co-ordinated as they should be. The cognitive processes, that is the changes in the individual's thought, intelligence and language are retarded, hence these children perform below their grade level.

These students sometimes end up with anti-social tendencies by the time they are teenagers. A handout is not the answer. Select one child and see him/her through to secondary level education. The rewards may not be monetary, but the gratification is exhilarating.

I am, etc.,

SHARON WILLIAMS

spicey_shar@hotmail.com