The Myth of the "Culture of Poverty"

Are we willing to tackle the classism in our own schools and classrooms?

In "The Myth of the 'Culture of Poverty'," author Paul Gorski takes on the damaging myth that people living in poverty share a consistent and observable "culture." The culture of poverty myth, claims Gorski, leads even the most well-intentioned teacher to have low expectations for low-income students and "fear their most powerless students." It "diverts attention from what people in poverty do have in common: inequitable access to basic human rights."

Gorski cites data that show, "Regardless of how much students in poverty value education, they must overcome tremendous inequities to learn." He suggests not only some comprehensive, wide-scale changes in social welfare and education, but also an agenda for what teachers and administrators can do in the meantime to thwart a culture of classism in their schools.

Do you agree with Gorski's stance? How do class biases play out in classrooms today?

Comments

[umphrey]

Asserting things doesn't make them true, though if it is done often enough it does make them politically effective.

I work with poor people nearly every day. They have more than their share of problems with drugs and alcohol, and they tend to be quite impoverished linguistically. Though their vernacular might be as "sophisticated" as standard English, their vocabulary is quite limited as is their background reading.

Low education and poverty are strongly correlated. Granted, none of the "myths" can be assumed to be true of any particular poor person, but to pretend there's no truth at all to them does nobody any good.

[drabarb]

Nothing in umphrey's post provides evidence to contradict Gorski's assertion: "Regardless of how much students in poverty value education, they must overcome tremendous inequities to learn."

What Gorski is arguing has to do with causality. Do poor people cause their own poverty (because of laziness, personal weakness, or family deficiencies) or is poverty caused by social inequities? If we blame the victims we are complicit in their poor educational outcomes. If we take steps to create more equitable systems, then we can empower folks to attain their full capacity. We provide them hope, and give them reasons not to need drugs and alcohol to cope.

[john thompson]

I noticed that non of the evidence in Gorski's article provided evidence for or against his arguemnt and yet he claimed that social science has disproved the existence of a culture of poverty. He's debating about culture, but if offers nothing but some data without even a falsifiable hypothesis.

As my old Leftis buddies used to say, "That is no coincidence." (By the way, I'm an old Leftist. I've never believed in a single culture of overty, but I don't know how you can deny the existance of multiples cultures of poverty.)

I was defending my doctoral dissertation in the 1970s, and a good friend made me strike the phrase. I was taliking about White tenant farmers in Oklahoma and I had clearly had not meant it in a precise social scientific way in the context of the debate that had occurred a decade earlier.

My advisor knew I'm not a racist, he said, but merely using that phrase in East Coast academics could ruin my carreer.

The problem with this political correctness, is that it kills efforts to invest in real social problems in school.

[Teresa Aguirre]

Having both attended and worked in inner-city schools, I understand the points behind the concept of the "Culture of Poverty". However, I would rename it the "Culture of Classism". While implementing a high-level vocabulary series for 6th graders, my goal was to ensure they were able to play on the same fields as the students from wealthy districts. Of course they hadn't come across words like "prevaricate" or "plight" or "disinterested". It was not my place to determine why or why not - simply to provide learning experiences that would allow them to "own" these words - words that they only needed to realize that they really knew, only these were new names for ideas they clearly understood. So we had discussions about the words, examples of them, and they created kinesthetic moves to illustrate the meanings of the vocabulary. The moves were reviewed by the class to ensure there was no ambiguity. They created 3-D representations of roots and related words, they found visual examples of the meanings, and they encountered these very words in text we read. Only now, because they had been made aware, they saw how omnipresent they are in books, films, and on radio. They learned AND USED them as well as any student could.

I think the deeper issue is not the misconception that their backgrounds hinder them. The biggest crime is the misperception by teachers that "these kids" just can't get it. It's all in the teaching. It's all in the expectations teachers hold for individuals in their classrooms.

[Margo/Mom]

Teresa: I believe that you are right in understanding the role of the misperception that "these kids can't learn," and it is clear that you are working to counteract it.

One further question to chew on--and I don't know what to do about it--is why is it that the culture of the wealthy neighborhoods (whatever it may be--whether it is vocabulary, or dialect, or social customs) determine what is acceptable and must be learned by all.

On the one hand, I understand the pragmatic and economic realities of who controls the wealth and makes the decisions. On the other hand, I think that this knowledge is exactly what we neglect at our peril. In other words, do we forever teach the disadvantaged young some tricks of survival in a world where advantage is unfairly distributed--or do we teach how to oppose the unfairness?

John--I didn't understand Gorski as aiming to disprove the existence of the culture of poverty so much as to compare the tenets of some popular beliefs regarding "culture of poverty" to what can be supported through the existing social science research. What exists does not quite add up to the assumptions that are generally included within the culture of poverty lore.

[john thompson]

Gorski cited a few studies, ignoring many more but he certainly implied that the research is definitive, and he wrote:

"These studies raise a variety of questions and come to a variety of conclusions about poverty. But on this they all agree: There is no such thing as a culture of poverty."

Neither did it seem like he accepted the conclusion that there are many cultures of poverty writing,

"In actuality, the culture of poverty concept is constructed from a collection of smaller stereotypes which, however false, seem to have crept into mainstream thinking as unquestioned fact."

In my field, I'd never have gotten past a editor with such bald assertions. He's making a political argument, pure and simple.

Expectations are important, but they aren't nearly enough. People who buy into this just raise expectations approach, in my opinion, are just buying into the Rightwing's ideology. After all, the Ed Trust just copied the methodology of the Heritage Foundation in falsely claiming that a significant number of NEIGHBORHOOD high poverty schools were high performing, and that their successes could be replicated given the resources we get.

Its a civil rights revolution on the cheap. Cheap grace will get us only so far.

We need a real civil rights revolution in education, not some old nostrums that would make faith healer proud.

[Joe Lane]

I've been working with both work-oriented and welfare-oriented Indigenous people down here in South Australia and have been pondering the culture of poverty concept for thirty years, trying to find which facets do not apply one way or another, and coming to the conclusion that Lewis not only had it right but had it understated (especially the abuse and violence components). I wish it were not so, because I have been dedicated to the liberation of Indigenous people down here for forty some years and have to admit that my dreams and illusions have been dashed. No, I don't think that the title of 'culture of poverty' is accurate - poverty is not the mechanism which keeps it going, even if it may have kicked it off in the first place. Yes, as Banfield wrote so long ago, and even Lewis agreed, improving people's financial condition does not necessarily change the culture that has been built up on the original context of poverty, the exclusion, the poor education, the preoccupation with 'getting by', the transitoriness of life, short-term planning, reliance on whoever could provide, instant gratification, and so on. Lewis tried to test his own theory in Cuba in the late sixties but found the cultural practises were resilient even there. Yes, it is alive and well and we must face up to that, and work out what to do, how to reintegrate people back into society (how bourgeois!) instead of denying it or explaining away.

Joe
Adelaide
South Australia