Reflection: The Pedagogy of Poverty Versus Good Teaching
Martin Haberman’s 1991 article states that we must replace the “pedagogy of poverty” with the kind of student-led/student-centered methodologies that we often have the privilege to use teaching at international schools. He says we can identify good teaching by observing that students are planning, explaining human differences, using the ‘technology of information access, involved in heterogeneous groups, the pursuit of big ideas/general principals, questioning common sense/widely accepted assumptions, students are actively involved and are dealing with the application of fairness, equity, justice, real life, and are redoing, polishing or perfecting their work, all of which are present at most IB World Schools these days. How do we bring these worlds together? I invite my future self (likely my only reader!), to grapple with these issues when she feels ready to do so. In the mean time, here are my loosely related thoughts on the subject:
Some of my work, one of my ‘hats’ one of my ‘lenses’ my roles, is to be an advocate for others who are not heard- generally because they are not, or have not historically been invited to the table. That’s been people of color, women, folks with disability, LGBQT+ neurodiversity, and poverty. These days I work at international schools that are inclusive in terms of women, poc, disability & neurodiverse- but due to the culture of where I work, LGBTQ+ is not officially accepted (Illegal in Uganda still- forget about culture), and hardly inclusive of poverty (how can we include poverty ed in an international school?- scholarships & outreach?, and of the scholarship kids, are they truly coming from poverty or are folks who just can’t afford a $25,000 yearly fee (per kid, per year + associated costs).
There’s this amusing term I love so much- I am always impressed with Conservative America’s ability to create useful terms, one of my favorites is “virtue signalling”. I think it’s a way to make fun of people who are like me (able-bodied, CIS gendered, white, middle class type) who put BLM stickers and rainbow flags in their front lawn- or worse, on an email signature! The thing is that this level of identifying ones self to the world as open, as free of prejudice is a step on the way of being truly free, and it is not the responsibility of the marginalized groups to change the included middle. It’s not the job of the uninvited to get invited. It’s the folks hosting most of the parties that need to extend the invitation- and it is exactly people who are not carrying the heavy weights of mutli-generational oppression that are free enough to work to reach other people. It is both part of my actual job at school to increase inclusivity in the hearts and minds of my colleagues and part of what I feel is the work of my heart, and I’m happy to do it.
In my work in schools I am often discussing how the development of ‘basic skills’ are the first step in gaining access to “the good stuff”. Learning to read pre-dates reading to learn/ writing skills and their connection to organizing thoughts, producing analysis… Kids gaining their ‘education’ through a pedagogy of poverty will never get to that good stuff without school leaders who have the vision of what it looks like, and well-intentioned folks working in poverty ed will, for the most part continue poverty through another generation, while suffering themselves.
I suppose there’s an opportunity cost factor to be considered here- in the way that UNESCO is suggesting improving opportunities in developing countries– Two major factors are presented- 1. School feeding sites (high quality local foods, served without stigma), and focusing the education on the needed community skills (let’s prep our kids to work where they live, right out of high school.)
In my dreams, I run a farm school with one of the guiding principals trying to reach a “closed system”, ala the experimental community Gaviotas, (find the link to Alan Weisman’s seminal work here) unbelievable to me that this text has a second edition, I have only read the first! Perhaps we need to look at schools that educate the poor in a similar fashion? All activism, breaks in generational poverty and urban farm development? Again, I’ll leave this here for future Carly (phd?).