Poverty and Schooling in the U.S.

Contexts and Consequences

Sue Books

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135607197
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Poverty is an educational issue because it affects children's physical, emotional, and cognitive development. Especially in current times, taken-for-granted ideas about poverty and poor children must be scrutinized and reconsidered. That is the goal of this book. Poverty and Schooling in the U.S.: Contexts and Consequences is in part a plea for educators and future educators to undertake the intellectual and emotional work of learning more about the social causes, as well as the sometimes life-altering consequences of poverty. Although such efforts will not eradicate poverty, they can help form more insightful educators, administrators, policymakers, and researchers. The book is also an effort to bring to the table a larger conversation about the educational significance of the social and legal policy contexts of poverty and about typical school experiences of poor children. Poverty and Schooling in the U.S.: Contexts and Consequences:
*describes what teachers need to know or to understand about the contexts and consequences of poverty;
*provides information and analysis of the social context of poverty;
*examines the experience of many children and families living in poverty;
*documents the demographics of poverty and offers a critique of the official U.S. poverty metric;
*reports on continuing and significant disparities in school funding;
*presents historical context through a broad-brush review of some of the landmark legal decisions in the struggle for educational opportunity;
*looks at some typical school experiences of poor children;
*considers the consequences of the federal No Child Left Behind Act; and
*offers suggestions about the kind of educational reform that could make a difference in the lives of poor children.This book is fundamental for faculty, researchers, school practitioners, and students across the field of education. It is accessible to all readers. An extensive background in social theory, educational theory, or statistics is not required.

1
Introduction

I hope this book provides educators with a resource for teaching and learning about poverty and its effect on children and families. In writing the book, I have drawn from my experience teaching graduate and undergraduate students in educational foundations courses at the State University of New York at New Paltz. When one of my students, an educator who teaches some of the poorest children in upstate New York, told our class, “I’ve become able to see my own students differently,” she gave me the push I needed to begin the project.

My teaching has led me to few conclusions, however. Always, at the end of the semester, I have been pleased in some ways but not in others with the learning that seemingly has transpired. Consequently, readers hoping for a “how to teach about poverty” book likely will be disappointed.

Instead, I hope the book encourages reflection about the experience of growing up poor in a wealthy society, about a society that tolerates this on a broad scale, and about what this means for teachers and teacher educators. Such reflection likely will lead people in different directions. Some might seek to influence social and educational policy. Others might initiate projects of advocacy within schools. Yet others might quietly reshape their perceptions and, therefore, their pedagogy to create classrooms more welcoming to all students, especially those whose lives have been constrained unnecessarily by the hunger, uncertainty, and distress that come so often with life in poverty. Such reflection is unlikely to lead, however, to study of the poor or to the sadly recurrent question of how best to “fix” poor children (Connell, 1994). What poor children need and deserve, but all too often do not get, are good teaching, good schools, and access to opportunities passed through social networks.

Educational reform efforts focused on the poor historically have drawn on and spurred research that amounts to studying the poor, including and especially their alleged deficiencies. This book starts in a different place. I wrote it in the hope that it would encourage practicing and prospective teachers and teacher educators to consider what’s wrong not with the poor, but rather with a social system that provides a wealth of opportunities for some and constraints for others. I hope this book helps educators consider what this system means for poor children, and how they might best respond in and outside their professional roles.

I often have shared this story (origins unknown to me) with my students as a way of illustrating the importance not only of responding to immediate needs, but also of gaining understanding of their causes and consequences:

Three men walking along a riverbank noticed children in the river, floundering and struggling as if they were drowning. Two of the three jumped in and pulled the children out—one, then another, then another. The third man wandered upstream. The first two rescued all the children without the help of their friend, who finally came back.

“Where were you?” they asked in exasperation. “We needed help!”

“I know” the third man replied, “but somebody needed to find out who was throwing all the children in the water.”

Teachers must respond with competence and compassion to “drowning” children. Yet teachers also need to understand why so many children are in this situation to start with and to know more than many do about their students and the broader social/cultural context of their lives.

I will not be surprised if some readers find this book lacking in that it fails to provide “answers.” This would be a fair observation, and perhaps a fair critique. I have not tried to provide a solution to “the problem of poverty” because I believe this is far beyond the powers of individual educators or even the profession of education. Significantly reducing poverty will require abolishing ghettos, providing all workers with a living wage, and allowing parents and other caregivers to devote adequate time to childrearing. At the same time, although teachers cannot “cure” poverty by themselves, they can—indeed, cannot help but—respond to the poverty that walks into their classrooms in the minds and bodies of millions of children. Pubic schools are sometimes the safest place many students ever will be, places where children potentially can eat breakfast and lunch, see a nurse, and encounter adults who treat them as “children of promise” (Swadener & Lubeck, 1995) whose intellectual lives and personal development matter tremendously.

In some ways, I have been writing this book most of my life. I grew up in a middle-class family in Charlotte, North Carolina, where both my parents also were raised, albeit in much different circumstances. Poverty was something they both had known and wanted me not to experience. Long before I acquired a vocabulary of social class, I understood it emotionally. In the early 1980s, as a divorced single mother with a very young daughter, I lived on the edge of poverty for several years, although with a safety net in the form of a mother, father, and sister willing to help, as well as a master’s degree and 10 years’ experience in the fields of journalism and publishing. Many people helped make those years less difficult than they might have been—most of all, my lovely, vibrant daughter. Still, the experience affected me deeply.

When I moved with my young daughter from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in the early 1980s, I encountered landlords who did not want to rent to someone with a child, prospective employers who worried that I would miss too much work as a single mother, and a doctor who refused to continue seeing my daughter when we joined the ranks of the uninsured. Yet, I recall clearly the day at a public health clinic when a receptionist grilled an African-American woman standing next to me about her relationship with her child’s father while questioning me only about relevant matters, such as what immunizations my daughter had had and when. I recall also the day a worker in the county childsupport system told me her full-time job paid less than my graduate teaching assistantship and part-time work as a courier for a travel agency.

Those years drove home to me the social foundations of identity. In my own eyes, I was the same person when I arrived in North Carolina as an unemployed single mother that I had been in Pennsylvania as a news reporter and wife. Yet I felt the shift as, in other people’s eyes, I inched toward “them” and away from “us.” I felt myself become, in the eyes of others, a problem.

As perhaps is already clear, this book has a point of view. I believe people in this country without much money are exploited, treated as second-class citizens, and deprived of many of their rights, and I hope this book provokes more outrage, especially among educators, about this social injustice and its educational significance. As Purpel and Shapiro (1995) argue:

To know without a sense of outrage, compassion, or concern deadens our souls and significantly eases the struggle of demonic forces to capture our consciousness. We need an education that produces moral indignation and energy rather than one that excuses, mitigates, and temporizes human misery (p. 156).

Reflecting on poverty and schooling brings us face to face with injustice, exploitation, and our own implication in all that has been lost, all that is now being lost. Owning up to this can be difficult work, fraught with the temptations of denial, evasion, and blame. Such honesty also can be empowering. We live not by incentives, whether carrots or sticks, but rather by the ideals and commitments that give our lives meaning and purpose.

When we offer a curriculum that skirts, downplays, or trivializes the moral weight of the glaring injustices of our time—unnecessary hunger, homelessness, and poverty; the ghettoization of entire communities; exploitation of the poor and the vulnerable for profit or sport—we encourage students to regard their time in school as no more than a series of hoops to jump, to gain a reward or avoid punishment (Kohn, 1999). Instead, education ought to push in the opposite direction by helping us to affirm ideals and strengthen commitments through ever deeper and more generous perceptions of the lives and relationships that make up our shared world.

2
What Teachers Need to Know About Poverty

We have yet to grapple with what knowledge does to teachers, particularly, the difficult knowledge of social catastrophe, evidence of woeful disregard, experiences of social violence, illness, and death, and most generally, with what it means to come to terms with various kinds of trauma, both individual and collective.

—Britzman (2000, pp. 200–205)

Poor children bear the brunt of almost every imaginable social ill. In disproportionate numbers, they suffer hunger and homelessness; untreated sickness and chronic conditions such as asthma, ear infections, and tooth decay; lead poisoning and other forms of environmental pollution; and a sometimes debilitating level of distress created by crowded, run-down living spaces, family incomes that fall far short of family needs, and ongoing threats of street violence and family dissolution. These same children are assigned, again in skewed numbers, to the nation’s worst public schools—schools in the worst states of disrepair and with the lowest levels of per-pupil funding. Not surprisingly, therefore, poor children as a group lag far behind others in educational achievement.

I start with these facts because the social horror of poverty and injustice, two sides of the same coin, is so often overlooked or discounted, as if it doesn’t really matter. Yes, I can imagine someone saying, some do get more than others, but whoever said life was fair? And what about the significance of personal initiative and the courage to “go for one’s dreams?” Certainly, luck, talent, and determination figure into the winding path any person’s life takes. This book is not about that, however, but rather about the social, and especially the educational, significance of poverty. Many children who grow up in poverty thrive despite tremendous hardships. This testifies to the amazing strength of their young spirits, but cannot, or ought not, be used as a reason to deny the profound significance of poverty in young lives. That some children flourish despite the poverty they suffer is a credit to them, not a justification for nonchalance in the face of socially induced hardship. Blake’s (1789/2003) young chimney sweep of the 18th century spoke prophetically to one of the horrors of our time too:

And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury.
And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King
Who make up a heaven of our misery.

That many poor children “dance and sing” does not make child poverty not so bad after all. Rather, it underscores how much is destroyed when a growing “social toxicity” (Vorrasi & Garbarino, 2000) suffused by poverty is either rationalized as inevitable or ignored because it is regarded as unimportant.

Teachers obviously cannot eliminate poverty single-handedly. They cannot reconfigure the nation’s political economy or redraw its social landscape. They cannot reshape the job market or change social policies governing housing and health care. At the same time, teachers can—and inevitably do—respond to the injustice to which poor children bear such painful witness. Consider, for example, the compassion and understanding Polakow (1993) observed in a kindergarten classroom, taught by Ms. Juno. Six-year-old Carrie often came to school distraught. Quick to pick fights with classmates, she was slow to join group activities. On this day:

The children sit on the rug and listen to the story “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” All are in the circle except Carrie, who sits at the arts and crafts table cutting paper. “Ms. Juno, Carrie’s not in the circle,” says one little girl. “I know,” replies Ms. Juno, “she’ll come when she’s ready.” When the story is over, Ms. Juno announces she has a surprise. She goes into the closet and emerges with a large tank filled with sand. “Guess what I have in here.” “A caterpillar,” says Travis. “Right,” replies Ms. Juno, “all sorts of worms and caterpillars,” In twos the children take turns at the tank and fish out worms and caterpillars. Carrie, after watching from her vantage point at the table, slowly edges closer until she is in the circle. Ms. Juno calls her up together with Annie, a child who sometimes plays with Carrie. After the hands-on caterpillar activity, the children are given a choice of painting, drawing, or writing a story about caterpillars. Carrie chooses painting and goes straight to the easel; with deep concentration she spends almost fifteen minutes painting a picture of a “caterpillar family” and then counting all their legs. (pp. 135–136)

Later:

During small group time, when Carrie is sitting next to Pat, she takes his colored marker and pokes him. Pat moves away, saying, “I wish I didn’t have sat next to you.” Carrie tries to write on his shirt with the marker. Pat shouts, “Quit it,” and calls, “Ms. Juno, Ms. Juno, Carrie’s writing on my shirt.” Ms. Juno comes over and moves Carrie, saying, “Carrie, you cannot write on people’s shirts, that really makes Pat feel bad—now come over here with me by my table.” Carrie goes to Ms. Juno and pleads with her tearfully, “Don’t tell my mother, she got sick again in the hospital.” “Your mother will be real pleased to hear how well you’ve been doing, Carrie, Yesterday you were real helpful, and today’s been hard for you, but we’ll work on it.” (Polakow, 1993, p. 136)

Carrie and her two siblings live in a subsidized apartment with their mother, who has been hospitalized twice with a serious illness. Since Carrie’s mother lost a part-time job due to illness, the family has lived in “constant crisis,” her teacher said, and has struggled to survive on public assistance through periods of eviction and a temporary cutoff of Medicaid insurance. When Carrie becomes aggressive with classmates, Ms. Juno pulls her away from the situation, gives her time to calm down, then works with all the children to help them understand each other’s feelings. “Carrie is worried about her mommy and sometimes she feels sad or mad because she’s going through a hard time, and we all need to help her,” she told the children in the class (Polakow, 1993, p. 137). Some of Carrie’s classmates avoid her, but others seek her out and try to make her feel better.

Like all classroom interactions, this one is complex. Yet it suggests the role of basic understanding in shaping teacher-student relationships. Carrie’s teacher, Ms. Juno, knows something about the enormous stress in Carrie’s life and responds with warmth, compassion, and the flexibility she believes Carrie needs to find a place for herself in the classroom. Over the course of her observations, Polakow (1993) saw some progress—no miracles, but signs of growing confidence and participation. “I can read real books now,” Carrie told a friend enthusiastically. “Ms. Juno said I get to read my book I made to the whole class in circle time” (p. 138).¹

After many years of observing “star teachers of children in poverty,” Haberman (1995) concluded that these teachers’ judgments and actions in the classroom reflect deep-seated beliefs about teaching, learning, and children. Consequently, Haberman (1995) offers not “10 easy steps” to becoming a star teacher, but rather a discussion of some of the commitments and beliefs evident in classrooms in which poor children flourish. One such belief is recognition that challenges come with the territory of teaching. “Star” teachers

begin each semester knowing they will teach some youngsters who are affected by handicapping conditions. They anticipate that horrendous home, poverty, and environmental conditions will impinge on their students. They know that inadequate health care and nutrition, and various forms of substance and physical abuse, typify the daily existence of many of their students, In short, stars assume that the reason youngsters need teachers is because there will be all manner of serious interferences with their teaching and with students’ learning. (Haberman, 1995, p. 3)

“Because they do not regard their students as animals to be shaped,” star teachers are not preoccupied with rewards and punishments (Haberman, 1995, p. 7). Because they do not regard poor families as scapegoats, they use what they know about their students and their families as a basis for helping students learn, never as fodder for parent bashing. Star teachers recognize that “most parents care a great deal and, if approached in terms of what they can do, will be active, cooperative partners” (Haberman, 1995, p. 12).

These teachers see their fundamental task as engaging students in educationally worthwhile activities and consequently “evaluate themselves whenever they assess student performance” (Haberman, 1995, p. 12). If students seem disengaged, star teachers wonder what they might do differently, and try something new—again and again, if necessary. These teachers persist, not because of an irrational faith in their students, not because they regard themselves as heroes, and not because they are determined to have their way. Rather, their persistence “reveals the deep and abiding beliefs that stars hold about the nature of children in poverty and their potential; the nature of stars’ roles as teachers; and the reasons stars believe they and the children are in school”—namely, for children to learn about themselves and their world (Haberman, 1995, p. 21).

All teachers need the kind of understanding evident in Ms. Juno’s response to Carrie as well as the commitment and persistence Haberman (1995) praises. Such a foundation cannot be reduced to the acquisition of information. At the same time, although knowing more does not guarantee better practice, knowing something about poverty gives teachers a place to start.

Such a foundation would include the recognition that poverty is a function of political economy, not of scarcity and not of personality. In wealthy nations such as the United States where there is no absolute scarcity of food, shelter, health care, or opportunity, poverty results from the politics of distribution. Although statistics justify the popular observation that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” politics drives this distributive trend, not natural law and not personal traits. Laziness, promiscuity, poor judgment, devaluation of education—none of these popular assumptions about the poor are either unique to any socioeconomic group or a cause of poverty in any demonstrable sense. Poor people do not cause poverty any more than enslaved human beings caused a system of institutionalized slavery to thrive in this country (Chamberlin, 1999), and just as studying the behavior or beliefs of slaves will not provide insight into institutionalized slavery, scrutinizing the behavior or beliefs of impoverished people will not lead to an understanding of how and why poverty persists in the United States.

Second, teachers need to recognize that poverty is not a Black problem, an immigrant problem, a single-mother problem, or a “don’t want to work” problem. Statistics do not back up this picture of poverty and its causes. As chapter 5 documents, most people living in poverty are White, most live outside central cities (many in isolated rural areas), and about half of all poor families are headed by two parents or by single fathers. It is also the case that people of color, people living in central cities, and single-mother families are poor in disproportionate numbers. Both realities are important. Recognizing the scope of poverty and its prevalence among people of all racial and ethnic groups, in all family configurations, and in all geographic areas mediates against notions of the poor as “them”—those “others” who in some essential way, many people imagine, are not at all like themselves (Katz, 1989). At the same time, recognizing how widely (disproportionately) poverty is suffered by people of color, especially by young children in single-mother families in central cities, leads, or ought to lead, to questions ab...