• George Mason University

Topics:, Monique Redeaux (mredea1 at gmail.com) has been a middle school teacher on the west side of Chicago since 2005. She recently received her doctorate from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Educational Policy Studies in Urban Education program. Although the student body in the United States is becoming more and more diverse, the teaching staff is strikingly homogenous: 90 percent of public school teachers are white, a statistic that is predicted to grow or remain constant according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. Equally interesting is that one-third of the racially diverse student body qualifies as low-income. Most of the teachers in these classrooms are not only white, but due to the re-segregation of cities and suburbs, most are products of white, middle- to upper-income neighborhoods and college teacher education programs comprised of predominantly white students.

George Mason University

Applying Ruby Payne’s Theory of Social Class Rules. Payne defines poverty as the degree to which one does without the. One must consider the role that culture. Ruby payne understanding poverty pdf. Ruby payne understanding poverty. Understanding the culture of poverty. Just beneath Ruby Paynes name on the.

Thus an increasingly diverse student population is being taught by teachers who look remarkably different from their students and who come from remarkably different backgrounds. Legislators seem to have no problem looking at certain external factors affecting achievement, such as parental involvement and level of education. But, given the demographics of public schools, educator Gary Howard poses a question that they seem unwilling even to consider: “Is there a causal relationship between the overrepresentation of white teachers in our classrooms and the underperformance of children of color in our nation’s schools?” Indeed, while many legislators may be unaware of the role of cultural competence, i.e., the ability to relate to diverse cultures, in teaching children in the United States, those who are on the ground in classrooms and schools everyday recognize its importance. Education consultant Ruby Payne represents one particular response to the culture clashes in the classroom. Her widespread success at once highlights the salience of race and class inequities, and speaks to the absence of practical educational strategies to confront them. Payne, a self-proclaimed expert on the “mindset of poverty” (though herself a product of a privileged, white upbringing) asserts that it is becoming increasingly difficult to educate students in U.S. Public schools because more and more of these students come from low-income backgrounds and follow the hidden rules of poverty rather than rules of the middle class—which govern how schools and workplaces function.

Payne argues that teachers have the responsibility to teach students these hidden rules explicitly so that they may attain academic success. Payne’s work is based on a racialized “culture of poverty” model that attributes the failure of the poor to their lack of middle-class behavior and values, a claim argued for centuries. Research on poverty, however, has found that the poor do not have a separate value or belief system. The question, then, is, Why are theories like those advocated by Payne continually recycled and popularized within educational policies and trends? The answer is that Payne’s depiction, in an endless series of vapid generalities, mirrors the popular discourse regarding the poor, which has become a sort of “common sense” in our society.

Payne’s work appeals to common sense assumptions of the poor as promiscuous, young, welfare queens and gangbanging, gun-toting drug dealers. Even as she uses chosen “scenarios” to deemphasize race, Payne reifies and promotes stereotypical perceptions of race and illustrates how class is racialized. She locates the cause of poverty in the most convenient place: among poor people of color and their pathological “culture.” According to Payne, people from poverty view “organized” society with distrust, even distaste.

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Hence, “the line between what is legal and illegal is thin and often crossed.The poor simply see jail as a part of life and not necessarily always bad.” The assumption is that criminal behavior is inherent in a “culture of poverty.” This criminality is directly related to the outlook of the poor on discipline. In a representative passage, Payne asserts: The typical pattern is to verbally chastise the child, or physically beat the child, then forgive and feed him/her.

The hidden rule about food in poverty is that food is equated with love.One of the mistakes educators make is to misunderstand the role of punishment in generational poverty. Punishment is not about change, it’s about penance and forgiveness.

Individuals in poverty usually have a strong belief in fate and destiny. Therefore, to expect changed behavior after a parent-teacher conference is, in most cases, a false hope. The basic premise surrounding the culture of poverty paradigm is the belief that they are different from us.

They, those from poverty, supposedly behave, feel, and think differently than those of us in the “mainstream.” This logic was used to justify the brutality, cruelty, and enslavement of Native Americans and Africans who were considered as the “other” in relation to their white counterparts colonizing this nation. This “other” was constructed as “savage, uncivilized, barbaric, evil, lustful, different and deviant in comparison to whites.