I have been reading this book ( Paul C. Gorski )and thought
of sharing these 5 stereo types about poor people and education, Its very
interesting. The book is too long but I have
tried to shorten it a bit..
Stereotype 1: Poor People Do Not
Value Education
The most popular measure of parental
attitudes about education, particularly among teachers, is “family involvement”
(Jeynes, 2011). This stands to reason, as research consistently confirms a
correlation between family involvement and school achievement (Lee & Bowen,
2006; Oyserman, Brickman, & Rhodes, 2007). However, too often, our notions
of family involvement are limited in scope, focused only on in-school involvement—the
kind of involvement that requires parents and guardians to visit their
children’s schools or classrooms. While it is true that low-income parents and
guardians are less likely to participate in this brand of “involvement”
(National Center for Educational Statistics, 2005), they engage in home-based
involvement strategies, such as encouraging children to read and limiting
television watching, more frequently than their wealthier counterparts
(Lee & Bowen, 2006).
It might be easy, given the
stereotype that low-income families do not value education, to associate
low-income families’ less consistent engagement in on-site, publicly visible,
school involvement, such as parent-teacher conferences, with an ethic that
devalues education. In fact, research has shown that many teachers assume that
low-income families are completely uninvolved in their children’s education
(Patterson, Hale, & Stessman, 2007). However, in order to assume a direct
relationship between disparities in on-site involvement and a disregard for the
importance of school, we would have to omit considerable amounts of contrary evidence.
First, low-income parents and guardians experience significant class-specific
barriers to school involvement. These include consequences associated with the
scarcity of living wage jobs, such as the ability to afford childcare or public
transportation or the ability to afford to take time off from wage work (Bower
& Griffin, 2011; Li, 2010). They also include the weight of low-income
parents’ and guardians’ own school experiences, which often were hostile and
unwelcoming (Lee & Bowen, 2006). Although some schools and districts have
responded to these challenges by providing on-site childcare, transportation,
and other mitigations, the fact remains that, on average, this type of
involvement is considerably less accessible to poor families than to wealthier
ones.
Broadly speaking, there simply is no
evidence, beyond differences in on-site involvement, that attitudes about the
value of education in poor communities differ in any substantial way from those
in wealthier communities. The evidence, in fact, suggests that attitudes about
the value of education among families in poverty are identical to those among
families in other socioeconomic strata. In other words, poor people,
demonstrating impressive resilience, value education just as much as wealthy people
(Compton-Lilly, 2003; Grenfell & James, 1998) despite the fact that
they often experience schools as unwelcoming and inequitable.
As with any stereotype, the notion
that people in poverty don’t value education might have more to do with our
well-intended misinterpretations of social realities than with their
disinterest in school.
Stereotype 2: Poor People Are Lazy
Another common stereotype about poor
people, and particularly poor people of color (Cleaveland, 2008; Seccombe,
2002), is that they are lazy or have weak work ethics (Kelly, 2010). Unfortunately,
despite its inaccuracy, the “laziness” image of people in poverty and the
stigma attached to it has particularly devastating effects on the morale of
poor communities (Cleaveland, 2008).
The truth is, there is no indication
that poor people are lazier or have weaker work ethics than people from other
socioeconomic groups (Iversen & Farber, 1996; Wilson, 1997). To the
contrary, all indications are that poor people work just as hard as, and
perhaps harder than, people from higher socioeconomic brackets (Reamer,
Waldron, Hatcher, & Hayes, 2008). In fact, poor working adults work, on
average, 2,500 hours per year, the rough equivalent of 1.2 full time jobs
(Waldron, Roberts, & Reamer, 2004), often patching together several
part-time jobs in order to support their families. People living in poverty who
are working part-time are more likely than people from other socioeconomic
conditions to be doing so involuntarily, despite seeking full-time work (Kim,
1999).
This is an astounding display of
resilience in light of the fact that working low-income people are concentrated
in the lowest-paying jobs with the most negligible opportunities for
advancement; in jobs that require the most intense manual labor and offer
virtually no benefits, such as paid sick leave (Kim, 1999). If you are
thinking, Well, then they should find better-paying jobs, consider this:
more than one out of five jobs in the U.S. pays at a rate that is below the
poverty threshold (Waldron et al, 2004). And prospects are growing steadily
dimmer, as more and more new jobs pay a poverty-level or lower wage (Reamer et
al, 2008). According to the National Employment Law Project (2011), after
increased unemployment rates over the last several years, the “recovery”
brought back over a million jobs, but a disproportionate number of them were
low-wage jobs, which accounted for 23% of job losses prior to 2010, but nearly
half of newly available jobs as of 2011. Meanwhile, less than half of the jobs
the Department of Labor predicts will be added to the U.S. economy by 2018 will
pay enough to keep a two-worker, two-child, family out of poverty (Wider
Opportunities for Women, 2010).
Stereotype 3: Poor People Are
Substance Abusers
As I mentioned earlier, low-income
people in the U.S. are less likely to use or abuse alcohol than their
wealthier counterparts (Galea et al, 2007; Keyes & Hasin, 2008; NSDUH,
2004). Interestingly, this pattern is consistent internationally. Around the
world, alcohol use and addiction are associated positively with income; in other
words, the higher somebody’s income, the more likely he is to use alcohol or to
be an alcoholic (Degenhardt et al, 2008).
Patterns of alcohol use among youth
are a little less definitive. Some studies suggest that, as with the broader
population, alcohol consumption and addiction are positively related to income.
For example, in their study of two populations of high school students, one
predominantly white and economically privileged and the other predominantly
African American and low-income, Kevin Chen and his colleagues (2003) found
significantly higher alcohol consumption in the former than the latter. Studies
by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2004) and Monitoring the Future
(2008) suggest that alcohol use among youth is equally distributed across
socioeconomic strata. What is certain is that alcohol use and addiction are
less prevalent overall among low-income people than among their wealthier
counterparts. This is particularly astounding, and an indication of tremendous
resiliency among low-income communities, when we consider that alcohol abuse
can be a side effect of discrimination and social deprivation, such as
inequitable access to social services (Lee & Jeon, 2005).
Similarly, there is little evidence
that low-income people are more likely than wealthier people to use illicit
drugs. Drug use in the U.S. is distributed fairly evenly across income levels
(Degenhardt et al, 2008; Saxe, et al., 2001), regardless of age and other
factors. According to Monitoring the Future (2008), for instance, found that
socioeconomic status does not predict rates of alcohol use and abuse among
youth.
It is true, of course, that alcohol
and drug abuse exist in poor communities, just as it exists in wealthier
communities. It also is true that substance abuse is a serious issue that has
deleterious effects on youth regardless of their socioeconomic status. I
certainly am not making the point that we should not attend to drug and alcohol
use among low-income people or consider how it affects students’ opportunities
to achieve in school. We should. We also should realize that when these
problems do exist in low-income families, they have the potential to be
particularly devastating because people in poverty who are struggling with
substance abuse generally do not have at their disposal the sorts of recovery
opportunities available to wealthier families. Nor do they have access to
preventative medical attention that might catch and treat growing dependencies
before they become full-fledged addictions. This is one of many reasons to
advocate for universal health care as one way to ensure equitable educational
opportunity.
What we must try not to do is
falsely associate drug and alcohol use and addiction with a “culture of
poverty” or think of it as yet another example of why poor people are
poor.
Stereotype 4: Poor People Are
Linguistically Deficient and Poor Communicators
Mirroring attitudes in the broader
society, many educators have been led to believe erroneously that poor people,
like my Grandma, are linguistically deficient (Collins, 1988; Miller, Cho,
& Bracey, 2005). This is a particularly dangerous stereotype given the
extent to which students’ identities are associated with their languages
(Gayles & Denerville, 2007; Grant, Oka, & Baker, 2009). Criticizing a
person’s language means criticizing her or his deepest self. It can lead
students targeted in this way to feel disconnected from school (Christensen,
2008).
Fortunately, there is good reason not
to criticize. When teachers assume that language is a marker of
intelligence, the stereotype that poor people are also language-poor negatively
affects their assessments of low-income students’ performance (Grant, Oka,
& Baker, 2009). This stereotype is built upon two shaky assumptions: (1)
that poor children do not enter school with the volume or type of vocabulary
they need to succeed (and that this is a reflection of parent disinterest in
education), and (2) that the use of particular variations of English reflect
inferior language capabilities.
Dupere and her colleagues
(2010) concluded that reading score differences between low-income and
wealthier students could be explained largely by discrepancies in the sorts of
institutions to which they had access throughout early childhood. For example,
poor and working class families, unlike many of their wealthier counterparts,
rarely have access to high-quality early childhood education programs that
support children’s language learning in intensive, engaging ways (Kilburn &
Karoly, 2008; Temple, Reynolds, & Arteaga, 2010
Contrasting this stereotype, studies
have shown that low-income people communicate with the same sophistication as
their wealthier peers. For example, Mary Ohmer and her colleagues (2010)
studied the communication strategies used by members of a low-income,
predominantly African American community who had assembled to confront a
variety of neighborhood problems. They documented how people at these
gatherings discussed and modeled complex communication techniques that could
help them address these problems effectively with their neighbors. They talked,
for instance, about using language to de-escalate conflict, being
conscious of their tone of voice, and approaching their neighbors in an
inviting, non-hostile manner.
Stereotype 5: Poor People Are
Ineffective and Inattentive Parents
In my experience, the “bad parent”
stereotype is based largely on other false stereotypes, like the ones we
already have debunked: poor parents don’t value education, poor parents are
substance abusers, and so on. It also is based on decontextualized
considerations of other sorts of evidence. For instance, when I hear that
low-income children watch television and participate in other sedentary
activities at higher rates than their wealthier peers, my initial reaction
might be, “A-ha, further evidence that poor parents are inattentive to
children’s well-being.” In order to reach that conclusion, though, I would have
to ignore the fact that low-income youth have considerably less access to a
whole range of after school and extracurricular activities, as well as to
recreational facilities, than their wealthier peers (Macleod et al., 2008;
Shann, 2001).
Researchers routinely have found
that low-income parents and guardians are extremely attentive to their
children’s needs despite the many barriers they must overcome to provide for
their families. This is no less true for poor single mothers, who often are the
most scorned targets of the “bad parent” stereotype. We already established,
for instance, that poor single mothers overwhelmingly claim a sense of
responsibility for inspiring their children to pursue higher education. More
broadly speaking, when Robert Hawkins (2010) used a variety of qualitative
research techniques to examine how 20 formerly homeless single mothers use
their social networks to improve their lives, he found that they prioritized
the wellbeing of their children in virtually every decision they made. He also
found that they were not shy about seeking the help they needed to provide a
good life for their children, even when doing so made them vulnerable or
uncomfortable.
In fact, following their
longitudinal study of low-income families, a follow-up to Annette Lareau’s
(2000) now-famous study of how socioeconomic class affects children’s home
lives, she and Elliot Weininger (2008) unequivocally denounced the “bad parent”
stereotype. They concluded that “working class and poor parents are no less
deeply committed … to the well being of their children than are middle class
parents” (p. 142).
I agree, most of students in Tanzania and other developing countries come not rich families but parents really work hard to provide for them and pay school fees, .
Well, Stereotypes are really hard to
comment on, Lets say some people are lazy and don’t value education without classifying as the rich or the poor,
the women or men, the black or white , the rural or urban etc.
When it comes to reading, you might think it may never be possible
for your child to one day pick up a novel and read leisurely for hours.
For some children, this may indeed be true. However, this does not mean
that literacy is to be completely scratched off your lesson plans.
Instead, you have an obligation to expose your child to the experiences
that are necessary for his life-long success. It’s through this exposure
that doors open, the mind expands, and brain connections are made.
