7 posts tagged “poverty”

To be honest, after a second perusal of Ruby Payne's A Framework for Understanding Poverty I'm not sure how I feel about it. Two years ago when I first blogged about the book I had this to say. Oh, the days when I was a fiery leftist blogger.... I still feel Payne overly generalizes a very large, exploited population whose absent voice in a book such as this speaks volumes. I still feel it is inherently absurd to think you can understand poverty, the lifestyles of many people in poverty, or other such deeply complex and malleable concepts by reading a book. I still feel that the myriad holes in Payne's argument makes it as useful as a two-dollar bill in the vending machines on the first floor of Guyton. However, I do hear more of what Payne was trying to get across after having taught for two years in one of the poorest places in the nation.

I feel that the learning goal that was most effective for me involved teaching the Middle Passage to my 8th graders in U.S. History (prior to 1877). Very simply, this lesson was highly effective because I showed the students a movie as oppose to talking to them (lecturing?) or giving them something to read. The students were glued to the TV screen and actively asked questions about what they saw in front of them. I've been conflicted about using movies in my class as the main means of instruction in any particular lesson. However, in light of this lesson, I've come to see their utility in teaching certain material. The collective audio and visual representation of historical events in conjunction with the fact that the average teenager in this country--or adult, for that matter--spends many more hours each day watching television than reading. I guess the students just get more out of that.

One of my students---LL who's 17 in 8th grade, gang bangs and sells cocaine (and regularly gives me side hugs/pounds and calls me his favorite teacher)--said:

"Mr.Amutah, my car gon' come through and shut yo' car down. I'm a come through and shut yo' lil' speakers down. I seent you yesterday at the light playing that Jay-Z, Mr.Amutah. I seent you."

QS: "Mr.Amutah got that lil' Nissan."
LL: "Yeah, but he clean though."
QS: "Yeah, he clean."
LL: "That's all that matter. Long as you got you a lil' car and you clean."
QS: "Yeah."

It was enough to make me laugh out loud. He's a good kid. Just caught up in the trap.

It made me think about something we're talking about in my world history classes. We're discussing the nineteenth century Enlightenment in Europe and John Locke's concept of the tabula rasa that every person is born with a blank slate for a brain. Their environment determines the person they become. No person is innately good or bad. They're all shaped in time by things around them. LL is shaped by Silver City--the roughest small town in Humphreys County. I can usually tell when a student, whether mine or not, is from Silver City. They generally are a little poorer than other students, have clothes that are a bit more taterred and grades that are a little bit lower than others. They talk about the frequency of shootouts in this town of roughly 330 people on a regular basis. It's nothing that they're unfamiliar with. One of my students from Silver City told me a while ago about when he was hit by a stray bullet when he was out in the streets--perhaps when he shouldn't have been--and how that turned him around. He said it so nonchalantly in the midst of regular conversation that at first I wasn't sure if I heard him right.

It's endlessly troubling that these students of mine were not born in different circumstances but have just been given a raw deal with life. Their environment is all they know. Their small town is where they'll live and die. Life may be punctuated by visits to Memphis or a summer in Chicago but in a 365-day year they won't venture further than 100 miles from their house, if that, for 360 of them. Thus, the most important thing to them is who's riding past them looking clean. Who just went in/came out of jail. Who just had a baby (one of my newly-made mothers in 8th grade was excited to show me pictures of her baby today. It felt strange though. I didn't want to tacitly endorse the situation).

Go figure.

One of my students just came by my house (around 6:30 pm...as I start typing this). Again, a bad thing about living where you teach--especially with some of your students literally close enough to steal their family's wireless Internet connection--is that they sometimes stop by at awkward or unwanted times. Nevertheless, it was a generally positive exchange.

The student is a genuinely interesting one. My understanding is that his parents are not from the U.S. (I believe they're Jamaican immigrants...first or second-generation). That makes him EXTREMELY rare in the school already as 99.9% of the kids there have been in the Delta, or at least Mississippi, for as far back as anyone in their family can remember. Nevertheless, like me without the Igbo accent of my parents, he has no semblance of a Jamaican accent. He speaks the same English in the same fashion of people who grew up around him in Belzoni, just as my accent is the same as people I grew up around in Trenton.

Last week I took three entire days out of my EACH of my classes just so my students could do make-up work in hopes of passing my class. I went in order from those who needed to pull their grades up the most to those who needed to do so the least and in my most troubling class--my seventh period Mississippi Studies class with 9th graders---he was second to be called up (the student before him has a zero average). This kid had an average of 4. His mouth dropped when he came up to my computer and looked at the screen where his missing assignments, behavior log, and average were shown. His (inappropriate) behavior log has several recent entries--probably more than any other student. Out of a five-day week, he'll be put out of class three days, won't come to school one day, and will manage to not do work the day he's not put out of class. After turning in about 40% of his make-up work I re-computed his grades and his average went up to...a 13. Great. Next year, same class.

Anyway, so THIS student lives around the corner from me and came by a moment ago. He seemed startled that I came to the door and didn't really know what to say besides, "Hey, Mr.Amutah!" I replied with a "hey" also and inquired as to how he's doing. He said he's been fine and talked about our Black History Month Program that was held today. He said that it went well. He also stated that yesterday he came by with Patrick (another student in my 7th period Mississippi Studies class) and that they were worried about me. I wanted to say, "Bullsh*t. You wanted to see if I was still alive or not so you could run and tell the other students that Mr.Amutah is on his sickbed/quitting/dead/going back to Africa (?) so you all can have a party and not repeat my course. Keep it real." But I didn't. I just let the positive exchange be a positive exchange. He asked if I'd be in school on Monday and I said yes. He kind of started walking away awkwardly (this kid is sooooo weird) and then I bid him a good weekend. He did the same to me.

After experiencing this and reading more of  for our EDSE 601 class with Dr.Mullins I feel like I've repaired some. Reading about students in East St.Louis or Washington, D.C. or even in Camden, NJ--45 minutes from where I grew up--is very sobering. The realities of what these children and teens deal with should not be dealt with by any and while I don't agree that the end, complete and all-encompassing problem is lack of government help, I definitely think that these people have been royally shafted by local, state, and federal governmental bodies and politicians and this has increased the difficulty of bettering their current situations. I have no idea what my students are dealing with at home, in their communities, with other students, with other teachers, or what have you. To expect them to perform at my standards immediately and consistently is not fair. I'm not saying that having a four in my class is at all excusable, but I am saying that context needs to be given to students' behaviors and formal assessments--whether made by myself or by the state's board of education--should not be the be-all-end-all measure of a student, let alone a human being.

Perhaps I'll take my mother's advice and go easier on them with the *difficulty* of the work (mind you, I'm adamant that my work is NOT hard! Overwhelmingly, the students just don't attempt to do it). Next week, I know that I will definitely give ALL of my students at least one graded assignment daily with an optional, extra credit homework assignment each night. With a 13 average and only one week left in this nine weeks, some students have to get on the grind FOR REAL. We shall see.

A while ago I think I said that what I think will end up pulling me through these two years is a love for my students. I really hope that this love can be sustained and that it's potent enough to do so because I can't have too many more weeks like this week. Too many other options....

This was a very interesting weekend to be in New Orleans. I came to visit one of my college roommates who is doing some pseudo-reputable alternative route teaching program. It just so happens that this weekend is also when various major public housing developments in New Orleans were scheduled to be demolished. People have called this "a hate crime against poor people" and the issue has not only garnered the attention of local activists but Capitol Hill. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to President Bush asking him to halt the demolition of four public housing developments in New Orleans: St.Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete, and B.W. Cooper. Now some of these names may be unfamiliar to many of you but I know the names of all these "projects" because of them being mentioned in myriad rap songs by New Orleans natives. More specifically, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper are known as the infamous Magnolia and Calliope Projects, respectively. They've produced the likes of Master P, C-Murder, Baby, Juvenile, and Soulja Slim. Most of these rappers respect their project affiliation like a national flag. I wouldn't be surprised if each of these aforementioned rappers had the name of their projects tattooed somewhere on their body like so:

In this pic, you can see Juvenile's arms which have "'Nolia Boy" tattooed on them ("'Nolia" being a reference to the Magnolia Projects, of course). His love for his hood runs deep, I'm sure.

However, a question that has come up as I talked to my college roommate and his girlfriend about this issue in New Orleans is whether or not many former residents of these projects even want to return to these notoriously old and dilapidated buildings that make up these insanely violent projects. Although my college roommate will be quick to state that, even post-Katrina with a reduced population, New Orleans is still the murder capital of the Western world (a definite overstatement) the reality is that New Orleans is still highly violent today, though far better than its heyday (?) in 1994 when 421 people were killed and it gained the title of "murder capital." That year the homicide rate was a stomach-churning 86 per 100,000 residents--unmatched by any other city in the U.S. to date. Most of the most dangerous cities in the nations (a la Detroit, Compton, D.C., Baltimore, East St.Louis) have murder rates between 45 and 60 so New Orleans', former rate should be placed in that context. In light of these realities and the equally notorious public educational system in New Orleans many people are saying that it's time to destroy and rebuild. Why would former residents come back to a place like pre-Katrina New Orleans?

In Teacher Corps, class is often talked about over race. The program attempts to regard our work as being with poor kids even though my school is more Black (97%) than poor (95%...as determined by the percentage of students who receive free/reduced price meals). The class issues at play in New Orleans with regards to housing has definitely hit home for me as my neighborhood in Belzoni is the bougie part of town. What most of those in power are hoping to do, at best, is to turn the projects set for demolishing into mixed-income developments. Large swaths of entire neighborhoods may be demolished under the rebuilding plan from early last year and presently people are seeing mixed income developments as the way to go. I worked in a mixed-income housing complex in inner-city Boston while in college and it has its ups and downs (generally speaking). Ups: nicer housing, less crime, more green space. Downs: fewer units, more expensive surrounding businesses, potential loss of sense of community. I feel strange living in a neighborhood as segregated by class as my own. Poor(er) people live on that side of Belzoni. They generally work in service industries at fast food restaurants, in the catfish plant, or don't work at all. My neighborhood is one of professionals. Many teachers live there as well as the superintendent, police chief, and fire chief and various medical personnel, insurance agents, and catfish plant managers. Where is the balance? Should we even be looking for a balance?

I'm sorry that I missed the part of class today when George and Nate's debate on poverty was brought up. I'm sure it was a good one and I feel that it's one that should happen more often. The link between free market capitalism and its more diluted economic systems (such as that in which we operate) is a strong one, in my opinion, and one that shouldn't be neglected in our debates on poverty, education, and this land of Mississippi that we've all come to teach in--specifically with kids living in high poverty environments.

Free market capitalism breeds the economic and social inequities that spawn programs like the Mississippi Teacher Corps. Now mind you, our economic system is far from a pure free market one (what, with our social security programs, taxes, publicly owned institutions, etc.) but even now we see the myriad problems with this system. The links between poverty and crime, poverty and chronic health problems, poverty and poor public education, etc. lets me know that poverty needs to be eradicated. Most people wouldn't disagree with that statement, I think, especially after they have close, personal relationships with people in poverty whether as a member of the impoverished class, as a teacher in a city with a high poverty rate, or otherwise and witness people living in poverty conditions for themselves. It's not cute. The means through which this eradication of poverty occurs is what's in question. Do you attempt to have everyone formally educated, then gainfully employed, and ultimately living in homes that they own with savings and checking accounts that are contributed to frequently?

The reality in the United States is that we're a nation that thrives on poverty. We're a nation that exports poverty. We're a nation that was built on poverty (i.e. the indentured servitude of Whites and Native Americans and then the enslavement of Blacks...the labor force, at the time, was thus impoverished to a whole different degree). We're a nation that covets our Wal-Marts, McDonalds, and Nike sneakers that employ myriad people--though these companies just pay the overwhelming majority of their workers poverty wages and don't provide them with health insurance. Some would say that these people shouldn't be paid more money than their labor is worth on the free market. I say that consciously paying people less money than they need to survive with healthy levels of sleep, food, clothing, health care, etc. is criminal and immoral. I know that "healthy levels," "criminal," and "immoral" are all subjective terms but still. A poorly educated, low-wage labor force is crucial to the sustenance of our way of life just like slavery was crucial to the continuance of the Southern way of life prior to 1865. The difference is that slavemasters saw the people they were impoverishing daily. They were up close and personal with them and the conditions that they lived in. Today, we in the U.S. have exported myriad jobs to various corners of Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere so we don't see the people that Nike pays 17 cents an hour that Nike would have to pay $7.53 (at least) per hour if that factory were located in Vermont.

I think that George brings up valid points with his frequent infusions of an international perspective into Teacher Corps. I feel sad and angered knowing that some of my kids are in families bringing in only a few hundred dollars a month. Still, I recognize how they probably have more money/diverse food options, access to clean water/electricity, etc. than my cousins in Nigeria or friends George made in Mongolia. Many would give up their current lives in a heartbeat to come to the U.S. and do just about ANY job whether it's washing dishes in a Manhattan restaurant or raising catfish in the Mississippi Delta. As a Marxist myself, I feel that a socialist economic system would be far better than the economic system which we have now. I feel that having everyone in the U.S. make between $25K and $35K a year and work 35 to 45 hours a week is far is better than having some make $6,000 a year and others make $600 million a year and work a wide range of hours. I also regard security above freedom. The notion of freedom has been ingrained in people's heads as the ultimate right in a democratic system of governance (and its economy). Despite the fact that our society is NOT free to a large degree (just take a look at incarceration figures, generational poverty/generational wealth, or the voluminous laws on the books at the federal, state, county, and local levels), many in the West feel like infringing on people's freedoms is the worst thing to have done to you. I feel that freedom has many forms and faces and purposes and that in our current society one of those faces is a greedy one. People have the freedom to amass as much wealth as they can devoid of the conditions of others and concerns for their well-being (and I'm not just talking about giving money to charities or doing periodic and ingenuine community service). I feel that this is wrong.

One of my best friends from college recently visited Cuba and wrote a phenomenal blog post about its political, social, and economic reality. Take a look at that and then get back to me on capitalism, socialism, poverty and the like.        

Blog About "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" by Dr. Ruby K. Payne

Honestly, reading some parts of Dr. Ruby K. Payne's pseudo-anthropological expose "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" makes me want to throw up. Despite her key point #5 on page 3 that cautions readers, "This work is based on patterns. All patterns have exceptions," Payne goes on to lay out a litany of practices, ideologies, and circumstances that purportedly outright distinguish people along class lines in the U.S. Regrettably, her book ends up amounting to little more than gross oversimplifications, myriad non-poverty specific conventions, and blanket statements reminiscent of Fox News. Fox News has a habit of saying off the wall statements but the network's anchors often slyly pose these far-right statements as questions by adding a questions mark (i.e. "Barack Obama controlled by Islamic fundamentalist views due to this early education at a Madrasah?" Payne's book reminded me of this time and time again as she used a cover of personal experience, ivory tower legitimacy (she has a Ph.D), and philanthropic goodwill to spew 183 pages of garbage.

My problems with this book start at the very beginning--on the cover actually. "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" is billed as a "must-read for educators, employers, policymakers, and service providers." That's millions of people. All of these people are supposed to read this book to come to an understanding about poverty? The very thought of being able to get an understanding of poverty and its related conditions, "rules," and the like from reading a book is misguided. It speaks to the system of education we operate under that places reading above experience in educating human beings. I don't respect it. The scenarios throughout Chapter 1 are definitely situations that may arise from poverty but they're also situations that could just arise out of the blue or from people with a different class background. For instance, in the case with Juan and Ramon those individuals could very well be named Chet and Biff, be upper-class, and Biff could be on the run from police for cocaine distribution related to a high-society party with young adults at his parents' summer house. The politics of who and what are criminalized and for whose benefit are too deep to get into now but can we really say the Juan and Ramon situation is more common than the Chet and Biff one simply because Ramon ends up on the 10 o'clock news and Biff gets a two-year probation/1000 hours of community service/a suspended sentence by his family lawyer working out a deal with the district attorney? I think not.

Another part of the book that angered me was on page 57 where Payne generalizes about "the key roles in these families." Firstly, I don't know of any family where a fighter/lover, caretaker/rescuer, worker, storyteller, and "keeper of the soul" all exist (not to mention the fact that "keeper of the soul" is a laughable, Magic the Gathering-esque term). Payne's scenario of "ever-changing allegiances" through her example on that page again makes think of the various ways in which similar allegiances sway in middle-class or upper-class families at times. I know people whose allegiance would sway between one parent and another dependent on who allowed them to have a nicer car for their 18th birthday. Upper-class. Other grandparents I know might end up favoring one offspring over another depending on which supported grandson's decision to attend the college of his father and grandfather rather than joint the military. Middle-class. This entire section is further indication of Payne's falsified image as "the leading U.S. expert on the mindsets of poverty, middle class, and wealth," as she fails to see the possible congruencies between classes. Later, on page 87, Payne gives a highly stereotypical and borderline offensive IQ test that is supposed to judge people's understanding of things they should know if they live in poverty (I guess). Questions include, "What does dissed mean?," "How are a pawnshop and a convenience store alike? How are they different?," and my personal favorite, "What is a roach?" Upon reading this I almost wanted to scream "DOES THIS LADY REALLY THINK THAT ONLY PEOPLE IN POVERTY KNOW THIS STUFF?!?!?" Though instead I just sighed and flipped the pages onto the next bout of ridiculousness.

In sum, "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" will only knock your socks off as eye-opening if you have had no first-hand experience with poverty as an individual, no experience living in a neighborhood with significant poverty, or no brain to evaluate the circumstances of individuals in poverty from a people's, non-elitist perspective. It's like people who watch The Wire and think that's normal inner-city America. Noooo! That's BALTIMORE. Heroin capital of the United States. The biggest city between two other infamously large drug markets--Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The home of one of the busiest shipping yards in the nation. Various reasons contribute to why Baltimore is the way it is and so the The Wire shows not just any inner-city America but one of the rawest. Still, people from outside the inner-city who would piss on themselves on a West Baltimore street after 7 p.m. absorb it as the realest thing ever. A peek into a world they've heard about and maybe have even come near to, but from which they cower home every night on the other side of the tracks, city, or county.  That's what Dr. Ruby K. Payne's book is and that's one of the biggest problems with middle or upper-middle class social awareness--people feel that they can get it from just reading a book.