For nearly 20 years, two scholars at the American Enterprise Institute, Ron Haskins and Isabel V. Sawhill, have spoken across the country about a way to end poverty and welfare. They called this path out of welfare and dependency “the Success Sequence.”
What is the Success Sequence? It tells kids to, in this order: “graduate high school, get a job, and then get married before having children.”
To do so, they say, helps guarantee that you will be more financially secure and avoid poverty in later life. There is irrefutable evidence for many generations that this sequence works for all population subgroups, regardless of where they start off in life. Proponents are now arguing that students “should be expressly taught about the success sequence to shine light on the broadest road to, well, success.”
You and I might think this is common sense, and OK to be taught in every high school, right? However, according to AEI, “among academics and even more so among scholars in think tanks, its appropriateness as both an idea and a topic to be taught to students is hotly contested.”
“Some critics of the success sequence claim that it leaves out structural inequities and inordinately focuses on individual agency. Others have objected to the success sequence because it objectifies particular culture views.”
Yet public opinion remains strong – teaching the success sequence in school is “uncommonly strong.” There aren’t too many ideas in American society today that 77% of Americans support – teaching the success sequence is one of them.
Read more here.
