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Activity 2 Critical Reading and Reasoning

The document discusses how poverty affects students' behavior and ability to learn according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It describes a teacher's experience where students from poor families struggled to attend class regularly due to lack of food or money. Physiological needs like hunger must be satisfied before students can focus on learning. However, one motivated student who came from a destitute family was able to overcome challenges and fulfill his potential by joining the Air Force. While economic hardship can negatively impact education, determination and support for basic needs allow students to progress through the levels of Maslow's hierarchy toward self-actualization.

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27 views2 pages

Activity 2 Critical Reading and Reasoning

The document discusses how poverty affects students' behavior and ability to learn according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It describes a teacher's experience where students from poor families struggled to attend class regularly due to lack of food or money. Physiological needs like hunger must be satisfied before students can focus on learning. However, one motivated student who came from a destitute family was able to overcome challenges and fulfill his potential by joining the Air Force. While economic hardship can negatively impact education, determination and support for basic needs allow students to progress through the levels of Maslow's hierarchy toward self-actualization.

Uploaded by

giangoteaten19
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Activity 2: Read the selection below and answer the questions that follow.

Poverty As A Determinant For A Student’s Behaviour

By: Elisa O. Babao

For the past years that I have been teaching in the public school I was able to make a
comparative analysis to that when I was in the private school. Since most of my students in the private
school came from well-of families, I had no problem asking their parents about projects that may require
a certain amount of money. Handling extravagant activities is never a question for as long as it is needed
by their children and can help in the advancement of the school. Not so in the public school where most
of my students came from the poverty line; ones whose income solely depends on a not so socially
acceptable jobs like laundrying, barkers, delivery truck assistants, or in the carpentry. Theirs is a world of
insufficiency and mediocrity; insufficient in a sense that they need to live within their meagre income,
and literally survive on a day to day basis. Mediocrity I would say because education is no even their
priority. For the children, and yes, even for their parents, it is enough that they can go to school, maybe
not regularly, but at least their parents try their best to send them.

Tantamount to this saddening truth is the student’s behaviour that builds up towards their
studies. They have found their situations to be a valid reason to skip classes because they have no baon,
or have not even a peso to ride a trike. Some will use their situations as escape. Still, others will even
drag their parents shame into the classroom just to justify their misbehaviors. It is apathetic to say that
as a teacher, looking after the basic needs of our students is beyond my responsibility, but human as I
am, I just cannot stand unappalled every time I have students who did not report to class just because he
has no baon, or that he has to go with his mother to do a laundry, or to his father who has to go to some
part of the south to deliver gravel and sand, and he, my unfortunate student will have to work as the
assistant, shovelling off the gravel from the truck. It is even more repulsive to know that even if they
have the means to go to school, they do not even have a peso to buy boy bawang, or at least, a candy to
satisfy their hunger a bit. Imagine sitting down for almost 4 hours, listening to your teacher and hearing
your hungry stomach at the same time, how can they concentrate?

In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the physiological level is the lowest level; yet as Maslow stated,
individuals must satisfy lower level deficit needs before progressing on to meet higher level growth
needs. Deficiency needs arise due to deprivation and are said to motivate people when they are unmet.
Also, the motivation to fulfill such needs will become stronger the longer the duration they are denied.
For example, the longer a person goes without food, the more hungry they will become., and the more
hungry they become, the more defocused they would be in anything, if not, in everything they do,
because they still have to look for means to satisfy their first need. So there goes the ripple effect.

Opportunely in my first year of experience in the senior high school, I was blessed to meet a
student who came from a really destitute family but very motivated to go to school. He is not that
intelligent but he performs really well. Most often he would go to school without taking anything
because it’s either there is nothing to eat, or he would rather let his younger siblings eat first; and since
the food was scarce, tendency always is, he has to leave home without nothing at all. For the past two
years that I have handled this little man, I am encouraged to help him, even in the simplest way I know.
When he graduated from the senior high he got the chance to enrol in college, but when the opportunity
to take the exam for Philippine Air Force opened, he took it right away. I believe God willed for Him to
take the exam and passed. A first, I was reluctant if he can really make it especially in the training but his
determination to outlive their life in poverty surface in him that, despite his weakling physique, he
finished even the training. Now, he serves in the Philippine Air Force and I am proud of his achievements.
I can also see how happy he is helping his family and at the same time trying to fulfil his dream.

The basic premise for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is that students’ progress through a set of
sequential needs from physiological to self-actualization. As they move up through the levels, they feel
more comfortable in their learning environment and have the confidence to push further. If a child is
hungry, his desire to attend school lessens because his focus is how to satisfy the hunger. Also, this level
become predominant when unsatisfied. When a deficit need has been 'more or less' satisfied it will go
away, and our activities become habitually directed towards meeting the next set of needs that we have
yet to satisfy. These then become our salient needs. However, growth needs continue to be felt and may
even become stronger once they have been engaged. Growth needs do not stem from a lack of
something, but rather from a desire to grow as a person. Once this growth needs have been reasonably
satisfied, one may be able to reach the highest level called self-actualization.

According to Maslow, every level in the hierarchy has its own implications. You cannot go
through the higher level without satisfying those at the bottom. But it is in the person’s determination to
know if he or she can get to the full satisfaction of himself. One’s economic status is not and should not
be the deciding factor as to whether he’ll get better or not. Every person is capable and has the desire to
move up the hierarchy toward a level of self-actualization. One’s hunger should not be the determining
factor to one’s success, but rather the spark that must lead him to making a fire out of it.

GUIDE QUESTIONS:

1. What is the purpose of the text?

2. To whom, is the text addressed?

3. What is the writer’s stand point about the issue?

4. How did you find the topic?

5. What is your own point of view about the issue? Do you agree or disagree with the author?

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