We are at this moment participating in a major exercise of poverty alleviation. The minister of Finance?s basic tenet is that our combat against poverty starts with the poor. Go to them to transform them. It is useless to dwell in abstractions about this problem. Research studies show that at the least 50% of the poor are able to get out of their situation after a few generations because they are equipped with resilience to poverty. In fact, resilience is the capacity of all individuals to transform and change, no matter what the risks. Resilience is a self-righting mechanism.

■ <B>The mentality of the poor</B>

The risk factors associated with poverty are the disabling effects of cultural, economic, personality, moral and spiritual indigence. There is a tendency for the poor to crowd in one place and for poverty to reinforce itself with a discouraging and pessimistic outlook on life. Poverty becomes fatalistic and the poor indulge in a rich lyricism of self-pity to refuse change. Life is lived for convenience and by convenience because convenience allows one to go on existing. Morality, which is the mainstream of middle-class values, loses its significance because it obstructs survival. Religion becomes a string of ritualistic postures and is reduced to either blind faith or a heavy dependence on miracles. The god of the poor cures, makes one succeed, helps one to realise his dreams.

■ <B>Helping the poor</B>

The protective factors in poverty are those qualities that help alter or reverse expected negative outcomes. There are agents of development that transform liabilities into assets. They are family, peers, school and the community. The resilient poor have intrinsic qualities that ? wedded with the transforming agents ? push them to success:

● Are the poor empowered?

● Are the poor capable of self control?

● Are the poor culturally sensitive?

● Are the poor socially sensitive?

● Do the poor have a positive self-image?

■ <B>Supporting the poor</B>

There is a mix of factors that can support the poor.

The poor must be trained to develop high expectations. If the home discourages, the school must strike the balance. In a fight against poverty, the teacher must leave the comfort of his world to empathize with the difficult, challenging and, very often, abusive world of the poor. Any abstract notion of poverty is of little use. The poor may be pathological liars because lies are convenient to survive. How does the teacher whose middle-class morality estranges him from liars accommodate the poor?

Caring is a psychologically supportive tool in the education of the poor. Caring implies the evaporation of one?s prejudices to accept the poor as he is and to seek his reform from his starring point, not that of the educator. Caring implies non judgemental listening to the poor and providing opportunities for meaningful issues.

The presence of stable, reliable adult leadership is crucial. The home cannot be radically transformed. The school can, if there is a caring leadership. Every adult must try to be a role model that the poor pupil can cling to at first, emulate gradually before he becomes independent.

Family communication is another inevitable imperative. If it is not available at home, can the class provide rudiments of a convivial, interested and affective interaction with the child ? The emphasis should be on making the school different from the home so that the damage done at home can be repaired at school till the child feels at ease with a larger group. In fact the dysfunctional family needs a surrogate, a substitute for the child?s emotional stability.

■ <B>Resilient survivors</B>

Resilient survivors must have social competences ? skills of responsiveness, flexibility or adaptive ability, empathy, caring and communication skills. The class which is wisely driven can provide this package of skills. The teacher must realise that the curricular objectives can be achieved more easily if these social competencies are developed. Academic performance does not happen in a vacuum. It needs an affective, sensorial-motor, kinaesthetic base. We are constantly making the mistake of considering cognitive skills as auto-units. Most of the resilient survivors who have performed well academically have one point of emotional stability in their relations.

■ <B>Life skills</B>

It is unfortunate that we have not realised the importance of life skills for all our youth. From conflict resolution to the ability to make choices based on sound discrimination, as in sex education, the child learns to stand on his feet and become autonomous. It is vain to teach a person to read ?cigarettes kill? if he cannot make the choice of refusing the first one offered to him. Life skills curriculum will teach planning, help seeking, critical and creative thinking. The child must be able to practise an adaptive distancing from negative messages and conditions.

■ <B>Social reengineering </B>

A whole process of social re-engineering is needed in the class to promote the poor child?s self esteem. A self concept is the prime motor of ambition and high expectations. Let every success, however trivial, be acknowledged and celebrated. The teacher must have an eye for distinctive behaviour of the underprivileged child that can demarcate him from others. I am all for positive discrimination if it helps a poor person to survive the constant onslaught he undergoes in a competitive, achievement-oriented society.

■ <B>Self righting nature</B>

Let us realise that the human organism is made with a self-righting nature, but it unfolds in the presence of certain enabling attributes of environment. The Mauritian classroom is a microcosm of our society and reflects the tension and conflicts of the world outside. The poor suffer from a lack of connectedness through both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. We have to provide those opportunities for connectedness. The battle against poverty at school is a battle against attitudes of the poor to themselves and attitudes of the well-to-do towards the poor. The saving grace is that in this battle the teacher is not alone. Once resilience has been built, the child can help himself out of paralysing prejudices.