The War on Poverty Can be Won in the Classroom
I know I have written several articles about the importance of mentors for children born into poverty. But, I’ll say it again, without mentors, most children born into poverty are destined to remain stuck in the cycle of poverty.
I know many of you, dear readers, are teachers currently using my memoir in your classrooms as a real life example in the study of the culture of poverty. I really enjoy the Q & A sessions with the students.
An example of the type of questions which student’s ask can be found on my website at Students Interview Poverty Victim. I believe discussions like these can take a lot of stress out of the classroom.
In studying the sociology of behavior, and in particular the culture of poverty, there is no doubt that supplementing the frequently contrived dialogues and vetted texts to be found therein with real-world examples, helps the students better understand the behavioral differences of the various economic classes.
The U.S. Job Corps, well known for their inventive approach to teaching impoverished teens, is one of the key reasons I was able to make that transition from the culture of poverty to the culture of mainstream society.
I know some teachers who aren’t afraid to ratchet up the jargon to a level of visible frustration during a scheduled teacher’s meeting regarding disruptive students.
No doubt every teacher has their favorite stories to share with fellow teachers about disruptive students, but it is fair to say that many classroom disruptions are created because of the diversity of culture in the classroom. I was one of those disruptive students during my childhood and adolescent years.
I’ll use one example to illustrate the point. Here’s the scenario: I’m in the classroom, sitting at my desk, but my mind is focused upon what happened at home that morning, before I left for school. I was awakened at 4am by the noise of my drunken father, who had been on a drinking binge.
He was in a heated argument with my mother because he wanted her to get out of bed and “fix something to eat.” The argument continued nonstop until the break of dawn, then erupted into a physical confrontation.
I ran into the kitchen just as my father landed a knockout punch to my mother, slamming her head against the concrete floor of the apartment in which we lived–a housing project. He kicked her twice as she lay unconscious and stormed out the door.
My point is that for many students the problem is not what is happening in the classroom that is causing them to be disruptive, but rather what is happening at home. Teachers are given neither the time nor the resources to deal with situations like this.
At school I struggled to stay focused upon what the teacher was saying. Often the teacher called me out for not paying attention. The more she admonished, the angrier I became. I wasn’t in a state of mind to be flexible or even to find a way to work with the teacher.
Sadly, many children born into generational poverty face a different crisis every day. Clearly there are huge differences between the emotional state of the poverty students and that of the middle class students.
Even without mentors, impoverished students will be regularly advanced through the public school system and many of them will drop out before completing high school. Of those who do drop out, many will become dependent upon the government for support. In other words, society can pay for their education while they are young, or pay for their continued support as adults when they are no longer employable.
The ease with which students can be taught to use their social imaginations to understand the various cultures in America has been proven true by the Job Corps and by many teachers from New York to California.
Establishing a framework for understanding poverty at the classroom level is not just a teaching opportunity, it is critical to winning the war on poverty.
Teaching children about the culture of poverty early on in the classroom is the best way to fight the war on poverty. It can also take a lot of stress out of the classroom. Or we could do nothing to fix this problem and allow continued unacceptably high dropout rates in poverty neighborhoods, thus assuring increased poverty rates as those children reach adulthood.
But first, society must be prepared to increase investments at the classroom level.
