Systemic failure in the curriculum appears to be designed to provide participants with the structural understanding of the causes of poverty and its perpetuation. Earlier in this chapter I
discussed that the literature informs participants about the racist housing policies that precipitated the suburbs and left the inner city to decay from scarce resources, which is an example of systemic failure. In this section I examine further systemic failures as reflected in the Mission Year curriculum literature. Underlying much of the discourses found in the literature is that most systems in society are designed from a white or “Euro” point of view, such as the aforementioned FHA loans for whites only. Woodley
(2001: 101) claims that “systemic ethnocentrism is perpetual in governing policies (official or unofficial) that maintain an unhealthy ethnic or culturally biased status quo.” Some examples found in the book can be seen in the education system that is designed for Euro learners and hinders groups such as Native Americans who learn by experience.
Past systemic failures remain relevant because the consequences still remain with us, while new ways of reinforcing the very effects of those old policies are continually implemented. In Jacobsen's (2003) plea for New Urban community he begs that building up and sacrificing for community must be accompanied by institutional as well as structural change. What can be discovered from Jacobsen is that under-resourcing through isolation is preserved through opposition to annexation of inner-suburbs by cities and low-income housing policies. He attacks the suburban public outcry naming cities as power hungry when they propose to annex inner suburban towns. Jacobsen criticizes suburban dwellers for actively free-riding – taking advantage of the nearby city while contributing nothing to it. He argues that they have received places to play and shop, job opportunities, and a wealth of other amenities from the city. As such, Jacobsen argues that, it is more than fair that suburban dwellers should pay their share of the cost of an urban lifestyle through annexation. He also sees an unequal distribution of low-income housing as a problem. Jacobsen, who uses a redistributive concept of justice, claims that there are too few low-income housing projects going into wealthy areas. He proposes that an equal distribution may be the only workable solution in providing low-income housing. He appeals to the participants’ faith on the issue by writing,
...as Christians, this may be an area we want to adopt as one of our justice concerns and into which we should invest some of our moral clout. It is probably – in addition to being the right thing to do – the smartest thing for us to do as a culture (Jacobsen 2003: 151).
His suggestions are bottom up, meaning, he is calling for people to support institutional change, yet in the meantime, reject the status quo and implement the necessary changes of their own will with their own resources.
The Mission Year literature includes a book about welfare reform by Sharon Hays (2003)
entitled, Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform. She argues that welfare reform is ineffective because the legislation is founded on competing and contradictory visions negotiated by conservatives and liberals to satisfy their constituencies. The resulting work requirements placed on single mothers are for liberals a way of “transforming women who would otherwise merely stay at home and care for their children into women who are self-sufficient and independent” (Hays 2003: 19). For conservatives the requirements are a way to “teach women a lesson; they'll come to know better than to get divorced or to have children out of wedlock” (Hays 2003: 19). Furthermore, Hays (2003) argues, two points which policymakers agree upon serve to bury welfare problems rather than solve them. They are, first, ignoring the structure of our economic, political, and cultural systems that create poverty, and second, treating raising children, wages, working conditions, and gender and race equality as “private” issues. Her suggestions for necessary institutional change, range from programs endorsing birth control, subsides for education, childcare, job opportunities, to a living wage through reassessment of tax breaks for the wealthy. Her in-depth examination provides another example of the role our political and economic structure plays in poverty as well as our blindness to it culturally. This understanding helps both deconstruct cultural notions of blaming the individual and offers political issues for advocacy should any Mission Year participants feel motivated toward the cause.
The curriculum aims at illuminating the complexities involved in the creation of poor disinvested neighborhoods, the perpetuation of poverty, and the existence of continued and embedded racism. Furthermore, the role that individualism and isolationism play in policy decisions is exposed, particularly in the work of Jacobsen (2003). It appears the role of the system in the Mission Year curriculum is to challenge the cultural perceptions of 'the other' that participants' privileged (suburban) experiences offered them. It evidences some of the actual reasons for poverty and the complications poor people face in attempting upward mobility. The curriculum does not go very deep into the complexities of our
political and economic system. It does, however, provide some specific examples that support its cultural critique of individualism, isolationism, racism, consumerism and their embeddedness in both society and the American church.