Michael B. Katz in relation to LIFEhabits

Yesterday in class we discussed the six problems of poverty that Michael B. Katz addressed in his essay “What kind of Problem is Poverty? The six different problems are: persons, places, resources, political economy, power, and markets. After a short discussion of how each different problem is important in its own way, the professor had us get into our groups to discuss how our group projects related to one or many of the six problems of poverty. My group’s project: Learning Important Fun Eating habits (LIFEhabits), will be focusing on looking at obesity rates in a school district and more specifically focusing on 8^th grade middle school students. Our goal is to educate students about the importance of eating healthy.

As we were discussing where our project’s goals would fit under, we came to a consensus that our project problem solution fell under resources. In Katz essay, his explanation of poverty based on resources focus a lot on money, and how poverty is the absence of money. In our case, our group felt that resources for us meant something more than money; it meant having the knowledge to understand what is happening, or why things are happening. The levels of obesity in middle schools might be the result of lack of education on nutrition. There is no real solution to this problem is all we do is give people money to try and change things without really analyzing the problem, and why it keeps happening. Like one of my classmates mentioned in class. It’s like giving homeless people money to go to the doctor, you re giving them the resource (money) but they will not go because they will either spend the money elsewhere or not be informed on where to go. The solution would be to taking them ourselves. Same thing will happen with middle school children and their schools. We can give them the money they need to change the lunch menu, but unless the students are aware of why it is best to eat healthy foods instead of Burgers and pizza every day, they will not eat during lunch, instead they will continue their eating habits outside school. Is all about knowledge. At least that is what many of us though as we started thinking about our projects.  But is it really? Professor Talwalker left us thinking about a question she wrote “is knowledge most likely conceived as a resource, or not?” on the board.

We also said that our project fell under people. The only solution will not only be informing students about the benefits of healthy eating habits, but also outreaching to them and trying to change their way of thinking. Many students do not like fruits and vegetables, and that is understandable because most of us went through that phase. But the only way to have these children change their way of thinking when it comes to choosing between healthy foods and junk food, is by motivating them and once again informing them about nutrition. At the end of the day this could be our biggest problem, having children understand.

Finally the third category in which our project falls under is places. For this category we are still debating whether it actually does fall under places or not. In class our group we had agreed that it did because where someone lives also affects their way of thinking, but after discussing as a class, our group said that maybe it did not because we were not focusing on a certain race, we wanted to apply our project to multiple school districts, wealthy or not, and finally we were not going to solve this problem by moving everyone out of their neighborhood. But when we presented our project to the class, a classmate and professor Talkwaker both mentioned that place might actually be a problem. Yet we are debating whether place is a solution to our problem.

Overall Katz essay was in my opinion a well-written essay that helped us start thinking about specific problems and solutions for our group projects that we are going to encounter along the way.