Community Essay : ‘There Is Nothing More Reprehensible Than to Be Poor’ : Education: We are a self-proclaimed classless society, and almost everyone’s identity seems tied to its myth.
One factor no one includes in the litany of why schools fail is the way we deal with poverty. I don’t mean the “culture of poverty” with its high rate of gang violence, teen-age parenthood, substance abuse and related fill-ins the media presents as “news” on slow days. I mean the way we middle-class educators insist on ignoring the socioeconomic caste system that divides our students.
The L.A. city schools, with more ethnic diversity than any school system on earth, must pay lip service to the problem of racism. But the invisible mechanism that divides every group of students into first- and second-class citizens goes untouched.
In every classroom, there are the “real” students, the ones whose images hover vaguely in the background when “our class” is mentioned at faculty meetings, when activities or parent involvement is considered or “what is best for these students” is planned. These are the students whose aptitudes and wishes are taken into account, whose opinions matter, whose “side” in a confrontation is heard. These are the students the school is for. Not surprisingly, these are the ones who succeed.
Then there are the others, those whose voices, if raised at all, are heard as the voices of strangers, students who have “no business” disagreeing with or complaining about “our” policies or “our” decisions or “our” teachers. Most of these students say nothing. Instead, they vote with their feet, walking out by the thousands. “They didn’t ‘buy into’ the educational system,” we say, not hearing the significance of our own metaphors. For, of course, these students who don’t count are the poor.
There is nothing more reprehensible in our culture than to be poor. Biblical injunctions and the “poor but honest” heroes of fairy tales are conceptual dinosaurs, incomprehensible to kids today. “Your mama’s a strawberry (a woman who trades sex for drugs)” is no worse than “Your mama shops at Pic ‘n’ Save,” in an exchange of school-yard insults. It is better, some believe, to be a pimp, drug dealer, gangbanger, sadist, bully, thief or snitch than to be poor. It’s also better to be illiterate, ugly, addicted or stupid. Poverty is the ultimate social deviance, a condition so shameful its victims will go to any length to conceal it.
We are, after all, a self-proclaimed classless society, and almost everyone’s identity seems inextricably tied to its myth. As professional educators, our real job is to perpetuate the myths of our culture and we’re doing a wonderful job. On any survey, 100% of our school community would define itself as “middle class,” though their yearly incomes range from below $10,000 to well above $100,000. Schools foster multicultural activities in their proper place as supplements to the “real” curriculum. Ethnic differences are glamorized and trivialized at the same time, but the more deeply significant socioeconomic ones are ignored altogether.
Everyone is treated with the middle-class expectations of those who run the schools, and the disgrace of being “low income” is constantly reinforced by their tacit acceptance of poverty as shameful. Sensitive teachers cannot imply that any student might be less affluent than any other for fear of embarrassing the poorer one. Since no student will admit to being poor (except those who are not), teachers and students are engaged in a conspiracy to deny that poverty exists. Certainly this is kinder than publicly humiliating students, but it is merely the brighter side of the same coin. An institutionalized lie must be defended, and its burden borne by those least able to bear it: students who are written off as irresponsible or hostile because they “can’t make it” to school functions at which they are expected, don’t come through with fees they raised their hands and agreed to, “refuse” to participate in fund-raisers and are “excessively” absent for personal reasons that they dare not explain, like not being able to get their clothes washed, not having clothes or shoes or money, being needed to baby-sit or watch the house, or taking the opportunity to work.
The school’s unspoken expectation that all students share a core of middle-class experiences undermines the poor in every facet of the curriculum. Poor children are often afraid of experiences like a boat ride, a trip to the library or a hike, which are commonplace to middle-class children. They are fearful of the experience itself, or that they won’t be able to dress or behave appropriately; but they cannot admit the fear or its cause: to do so would reveal who they are and expose them to ridicule. Conversely, poor students who have been involved in middle-class experiences have often suffered condescension or outright rejection and are unwilling to risk “stepping out of place” again. So they tough it out. The “teacherish” anger they draw for “having an uncooperative attitude” is easier to deal with.
They hesitate to try new approaches to learning for the same reasons. They cannot admit they’ve never worked on a group project, used a computer or chosen their own reading material. It’s safer to refuse than do the wrong thing. Classroom discussions become torture. They can’t share any of the important things that have happened to them because they might give away how poor they are.
The ways they solve problems at home are often inappropriate at school and they know it, just as they know school behavior would be suicidal on the streets. But they are forbidden to discuss these conflicts or articulate their discomfort with the way things are done at school.
Poverty is frightening: That the innocent should be poor contradicts our nation’s Calvinist values and undermines our bourgeoisie cultural mythology. It is easier to deny poverty than to come to grips with it, but this lie threatens all of our futures. It is time that the differential in our “middle-class” incomes comes out of the closet, and the consequences of poverty--which are sensationalized daily in articles, studies and the media--be claimed as our own.
It is time we recognize publicly that we are not all the same, that we do not live in a classless society of boundless and equal opportunity, that institutionalized poverty has institutionalized causes and that the struggle to conceal poverty can take a greater toll on the poor than the struggle to overcome it. Above all, we need to face our own class prejudice for what it is and change it. Only then will our students trust us enough to let us know who they really are and what they really need. Only then can we begin, privately and with great sensitivity, to adapt our demands to their realities.
Unless we do this, an ever-growing percentage of our students will face the destruction of their self-esteem at school, and we will never be able to accept each other for who we are rather than for what we possess.
