ARTICLE 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Heather McKelvey
Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Philadelphia, PA
Article 26

Hi. My name is Heather McKelvey. I'm 23 years old and a single mother of two children. I currently live in Northeast Philadelphia.

I was a part time student at Community College of Philadelphia from the fall of 1992 to the fall of 1996, when I started taking classes at the Temple University School of Social Work Administration. I was getting full assistance during this time.

In January of 1997 my mother was sick and I left Philadelphia and went to Texas to be with her. There I got assistance for three and a half months and soon started waitressing. My mother died in March of 1997. I moved back to Philadelphia in April.

In the summer of 1997 I started up again with classes at Temple University. I took classes during the first and second summer sessions and also in the fall semester. In addition to taking classes I had to complete a 16 hour/week internship. My placement was with the TOPS Program at Washington High School, a program for teenagers having trouble staying in school.

On top of this I was waitressing full time three nights a week from four p.m. to 11 p.m. and a double shift on Saturday from ten a.m. to 12 midnight. So basically I had no time for my children whatsoever. The two nights I had off from work I had to spend doing my homework. Most nights I made only $30. The pay wasn't consistent and it was difficult to pay my bills. I was receiving no assistance at this time.

Starting in November of 1997 my son, who had just started the first grade, began having a lot of problems at school. Kids were picking on him. He came home with black eyes. He was having bowel movement problems and emotional problems. The first grade teacher had difficulty controlling him in the classroom and suggested he might have ADHD. As a result of the pressure, I had to drop out of Temple University mid-semester in November.
Since I withdrew in the middle of the fall semester I was put on academic probation. It was past the point where I could withdraw without any consequence, so I got two F's for my final grade which pulled down my GPA. If I didn't return to school after one semester off then I would have to reapply for admission to college and with my GPA what it was I would not be reaccepted. I would also have to start repaying my student loan.

I applied for medical assistance and food stamps in November of 1997 because I wanted to get my son tested. In January of 1998 I finally got medical assistance for my children. But I couldn't take my son to the doctors until February of 1998 because the HMO did not activate until February 1st. At the St. Christopher's Hospital he was diagnosed with ADHD. He began therapy and the school is testing him. He was also put on medication.

Because of all the problems which were largely resulting from my not being home with my children, I changed jobs and became a receptionist at a hair salon Monday to Friday, nine a.m. to five p.m., so that I could take care of my son in the evening. From the work I was bringing in $218 a week, of which I was paying $105 in child care. I asked the welfare office for child care but I was turned down. I asked why and my case worker said he couldn't get into it then. I asked him how I was supposed to pay my rent if most of my money is going to child care and transportation and he said that I was not eligible for any further assistance and he gave me the number to a child care facility for subsidized day care. It ended up that there was a six- to nine-month waiting list. I asked him what happens if I quit my job and he said then I won't get anything.

I started working at the hair salon the 12th of February and during the two and a half months I was working there I was getting two to three calls a week from my son's school about my child's emotional problems. Luckily my daughter's babysitter was able to help me with my son and my employer was pretty flexible with me as well.

In May I had to quit my job because I wasn't making enough money to pay for the child care. I informed my case worker and he told me he would get back to me and never did, even after I called him three times. I then got a new case worker who made me fill out the application for cash assistance. He said he needed a letter from my son's therapist verifying my son's problem as the reason for my leaving my job even though I specifically told him my reason for leaving my job was that I wasn't able to pay for child care.

Also in May they cut my food stamps from $300 to $136 based on my income in March. This didn't make any sense because at this point I needed the food stamps more than ever. In June I wasn't eligible for food stamps because there were five weeks in April, and June's food stamps were based on my April income. I wasn't eligible for cash assistance either.

On May 19th I returned to school, attending summer classes. I did this because I was not working and by returning to school I could avoid having to reapply for admission to Temple. By doing this I could also avoid having to pay back my student loan, a loan I obviously did not have money to pay back at the time.
In May I applied for cash assistance which I would become eligible for in July. I was told if I wanted to go to school, I had to do it on my own time. However, I have to go through their job training program or independent job search. In the job training program I know from other people who have been through it that I would only be learning how to write a resume, fill out a job application, go on an interview - things I already know. The hours would not work with my registered classes. So I asked about the independent job search program. My case worker told me that they will not work around my scheduled classes. He said that if they called me the night before, and said that I have an interview at ten a.m. at McDonald's that I have to be there. If I do not go, I will be cut off of assistance.

As of today I still am not receiving assistance and I am living off of a student loan. I am paying $600/month for child care because my son is not in school for the summer, $400 for rent, $120 for electric, $35 for phone. The total is $1,155/month.

It's horrible and frustrating trying to go to school in all of this. Currently SEPTA (our public transportation system) is on strike. I walk my kids half an hour to child care and ride a bike 45 minutes to class, and then do the same after class, which doesn't leave much time to study. There's no time to go to the library and do the research I need to do. It's very difficult to fit in time to use the computers at campus.

Over the past two months, the hardest thing has been to get food for my family and get my son the attention he needs. I don't understand why they're making it so hard for me and others to go to college and get a good education and try to better ourselves. It's difficult to get a good job with out a degree and they're making it impossible for a single parent to get a degree. They want people to empower themselves, and yet they're not helping us get through school. They consider us getting a job at $7 or $8 an hour a success, but that's not a success. We need more than $7 or $8 an hour to live. I'm here today to give this testimony because what's happening to me and to many others is not right.

Thsyiamba Katende
Welfare Rights Initiative, New York, NY
Article 26

My name is Thsyiamba and I am a single mother with three children and also a student leader with the Welfare Rights Initiative at Hunter College in New York City. The Welfare Rights Initiative is a grassroots student organization, mobilizing students at the City University of New York to be visible and to have a voice in the welfare debate.

Four and a half years ago, before I began receiving public assistance, my mother lived with me, and she took care of my children. I was working a minimum-wage job between 48 and 55 hours a week, with no medical benefits and no possibility of advancement. Because I had no education or training, I went to college during the day and worked nights.

During my sophomore year, my mother became ill and could no longer take care of the children. I found very quickly that there was no way I could afford a babysitter on my salary for three children. That was the beginning of a long series of nightmares for me.

At first, I continued to go to school while working full-time, but I never made enough to cover rent, food, utilities, child care and medical care for four people. I struggled for a few months - juggling school and work on my own - but eventually lost my job and my apartment. In the end, I had to turn to public assistance in order to continue my education and keep my family together.

Being a single mother with no means of support aside from welfare has made me unworthy of many things in the eyes of some policymakers. I am unworthy of a better life for my children and myself. I am unworthy of any dreams, hopes or opportunities to transcend the poverty that surrounds me. I have even become unworthy to make decisions as to what is best for my family. Since I can't jump like Michael Jordan, sing like Whitney Houston, or play golf like Tiger Woods, the best way I know to escape my condition is through education.

However, welfare reform has done everything possible to make me give up this goal. I've felt myself sinking many times. The time I went to apply for day care and was told I did not qualify because I was attending a four-year college. The time I wanted to work during breaks but was still not eligible for child care. The time, in the last month of my junior year, when my public assistance case was closed for a year for asking permission to finish the semester before taking a workfare assignment; I was told "no." The time my food stamps were reduced because of my immigrant status. I am one of those whom statistics claim have been removed successfully from the welfare rolls.

Yes, I am lucky to have finished my studies this year. I have graduated with a BA. from Hunter despite every obstacle that welfare reform put in my path. But even now that I have reached my goal, I know that welfare reform has left a permanent scar on me and, more importantly, on my children. None of us will ever forget our days without food. Days spent crying and trying not to let my children see me in such a state of hopelessness. Days of trying to convince my kids it's okay to wear the same clothes every day to school. Days they had to stay home from school because there just wasn't enough money to go on class trips.

In New York City today, 75% of employers require a college degree for an entry-level position. 87% of people who obtain a college degree get off welfare and are able to achieve some economic stability. Three years ago, there were approximately 28,000 students at City University of New York that were on welfare. Today there are about 15,000 left. I could easily have been one of them.

College is not for everyone, but for those who want to go to school it should not have to be a choice between the are necessities of life and education. Education and training should be encouraged at all levels because for many it is the only way out of poverty. To me, the outright refusal to help, encourage or support public assistance recipients who have made a commitment to their education is the closing of doors in the faces of poor people.

Supporters of welfare reform claim that future generations will be better off. As I watch my children and their friends play, I can't help but wonder whose generation they are talking about. Certainly not the children of the poor! My kids are starting life off at a disadvantage. If so-called welfare reform means that my generation is excluded from higher education, what avenues are my children going to find out of poverty?



Synthesizing comments
Article 26

Jonathan King
Professor of Molecular Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA

Thank you for your courage in speaking to us this afternoon and thus helping so many others. The testimony we have received from you, together with
the testimonies received at local tribunals across the country, document the acute economic and social consequences of being deprived of adequate education
in our country.

Welfare recipients most often feel the immediate harm of educational deprivation in the inability to get a decent job. This is becoming more acute
as we approach the 21st century. Thus here in New York City the projections are that more than half of all of jobs will require a college degree. Yet less
than half of NYC recipients have had the opportunity of completing their high school education.

The welfare reform process in New York and nationally is moving backward with respect to education. As reported by the Hunter College group, since New York City instituted workfare, 13,000 students- mostly women- have had to drop out of CUNY. This cuts off the possibilities of becoming
economically and socially self-sufficient.

The notion that it is possible to assimilate the knowledge and skills available in college-level courses, while working 20-30 hours a work, is absurd. Going to college and mastering the material is hard work and is a full-time job in itself; like child rearing it is essential social work that needs to be done. Not just for the individual but for the entire society; it needs to be fully financed, including child care support provided. It is important to realize how deep and profound an aspect of modern human society higher education has become: Essential for a mother's ability to protect and raise her children; essential for an individual to become fully part of the fabric of human society; essential if the whole society is to move forward.

One of the features that allowed our biological ancestors to evolve complex societies was the evolution of learning. Animals and plants exhibit
complex behavior patterns and can respond in limited ways to changes in their immediate environment, but these responses are inherited and are not altered by actual experience.

Humans in contrast can transmit to each other and to their offspring new information that allows entirely new behaviors to develop, without any accompanying changes in our genetic endowment. All of the threads of social, artistic, and scientific fabric that we know as human culture are transmitted not through our genes but through learning. Ten thousand years ago, families and communities transmitted this through individual or small group oral traditions. However as human societies developed and after the scientific and industrial revolutions emerged, the sum total of human knowledge and human culture expanded far beyond the range that one human being could effectively pass on to another. As a result all human societies evolved more complex systems of education to transmit not only the culture of the past, but the advances of the present, to the next generation. These systems were generally available to the offspring of the ruling classes, and actively kept from the children of the toiling classes. Throughout recorded history slaves, serfs, peasants, and working people have had to struggle to obtain access to a full education. However with the invention of printing it became increasingly possible for them to obtain an education. 100 years ago it was unusual for a farmer or a factory workers son or daughter to graduate high school. By World War I the great majority of the population had some high school education, though for African Americans, Mexican Americans and Native Americans the opportunity lagged far behind and they are still struggling. In fact here in New York more than half of welfare recipients have not been able to complete their high school education. At that time less than 1% of the population graduated college, However, after WWII the advances in science and technology made it clear that continuing development and participation required that millions be given a college education.

The cutbacks in educational opportunity are not a chance occurrence. The corporate sector, having harnessed the revolution in computers and
electronics to automate major sectors of production and services, and having moved other sectors to lower wage areas of the world, no longer needs the numbers of skilled workers required in the previous period. As a result they are unwilling to pay through taxes and fees for the continued expansion of
education, and are also hostile to the extension of democracy associated with expansion of education. Of course this exactly follows the welfare cutbacks;
no longer need a reserve of the unemployed, they are declining to support their health, welfare, and survival.

As we go into the 21st century, in which genetic engineering, global warming, and the Internet are aspects of daily life, every individual needs
access to a quality higher education. The current four year period derives from the post civil war period. In the world we are moving into everyone will
need continuous access to higher education throughout their lifetime to participate in the constantly transforming technology.

On this 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we need to reaffirm the wisdom and vision of the authors in including the right to education in the declaration. This tribunal is one small step in rebuilding the social struggle needed to achieve the universal higher education that human society requires and demands. Thank you.

Testimonies - Special Issues