Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why you can't tell the hypothetical young, poor student both 'A' and 'B.' In fact, not doing so seems a bit manipulative (regardless of your intentions). A potential consequence of perpetually leaving 'B' out of the discussion is that, while some of these young, poor students will escape poverty and others will not, neither group may realize that the status quo reflects decisions made by human bein…
My fundamental concerns are threefold: First, is learned helpless. As the article you linked points out, learned helplessness is not the result of working hard and encountering challenges. It is the brain's default assumption in the absence of of encouragement. People's brains are already predisposed to inaction and helplessness by millions of years of evolutionary biology. Humans are already predisposed to fallacies…
In both the contemporary understanding of learned helplessness and its predecessor, that is to say, whether helplessness is the default state of human existence or a conditioned response, what's being considered is a person's view towards their ability to reach a desired outcome through their actions.
Decontextualizing the actions of those who face increased environmental challenges is likely to provide discouragement, not encouragement, as the actions of those facing greater challenges will seem less impactful in comparison to the more fortunate. In more practical terms, this means that the relative under-performance of the disadvantaged may be interpreted as some form of personal inadequacy rather than an expected response to greater-than-average challenges. This relates to something you said, quoted below:
> Poor people already know how hard their life is, they don't need other people to reinforce this.
This actually isn't true, at least in many important ways, and that's a major part of the problem. While poor Americans may realize that their house/neighborhood/car/etc. isn't as nice as those they see on TV, they can't understand what they haven't experienced - for example: the impact of stable finances, well-educated parents, or a high-performing school district on academic performance. This phenomenon also holds true for other segments of society - those more fortunate generally can't fully understand the disadvantages faced by those less fortunate than them.
This is why it's important to have honest discussions about the differing realities faced by those across society. If we don't understand the context of our actions, we can't understand the impacts of our policies, nor can individuals make realistic choices that optimize for their specific environment.
> discussion systemic problems is almost never accompanied by a quantification of the relative impact of hard work vs social policy
I don't think this is at all feasible. The lived experience of every individual is too unique, with an almost infinite array of immeasurable factors contributing to visible outcomes.
>A poor child cant wait 30 years for political solutions to improve social mobility by a few percentage points...Pursuing an education and clean record has vastly greater impact on outcomes today
I don't want to sound overly blunt here, but the entire point of my previous comment was that we can encourage disadvantaged young people to take the actions most likely to lead to success while acknowledging that 'the system' is broken and trying to fix it. Where did you get the impression that we can't tell children to study and avoid crime while also telling them that they should be aware of unique challenges they could face?
And, again, I'm not trying to sound blunt, but what poor child doesn't want to be successful? What poor child wouldn't want "an education and a clean record?" I think it's important to consider why many of them won't achieve those goals. To me, ignoring the disadvantages some children face and simply telling them to work hard seems both naive and insensitive, but, most importantly, unlikely to lead to a satisfactory outcome.