You said it would be safe

A review of past efforts to provide compensatory education and to intervene in the lives of children being reared in poverty revealed that the hopes these programs would eradicate poverty and its effects were not realized. The conceputal scheme presented in this paper juxtaposes the micro-psychological educational efforts aimed at helping individual children against such macro-social variables as joblessness and violence. Un less there is attention to the damaging effects of the macro-social variables on the devel opment of children, the micro-psychological educational efforts designed to help indi vidual children are likely to be swamped by the macro-social variables and thus limit the effectiveness of intervention programs aimed at individual children.