Reconsidering Poverty (It isn't fun)

The determination of what does and what does not become a matter of governmental action is, therefore, the supreme instrument of power.

So said Richard Neustadt in one of the most powerfully formative sentences of my professional life.

There is very little sentiment in the wider population for tackling the extensive problems faced by poor and poorly educated black Americans. What is needed is a dramatic mobilization of the black community to demand justice on a wide front — think employment, education and the criminal justice system — while establishing a new set of norms, higher standards, for struggling blacks to live by.

So said Bob Herbert from his editorial page perch in the New York Times this morning (8/21/10)

I want to introduce you to Ruby K. Payne, author of A Framework for Understanding Poverty, 4th Edition. I’ve been a teacher for a long time and I am here to tell you that it is hard to “see” poverty. Also, it isn't any fun to see it. And after you learn to see it, it is even harder to want to do anything about it. If you add “recategorizing it” to my two emphases of “seeing it” and “wanting to do something about it,” you have Dr. Payne’s contribution to the discussion. We’ll pick up Neustadt and Herbert as we go along.

Here’s Dr. Payne’s account of how students speak. None of this connects with my experience as a teacher, a fact to which we will return. Let’s distinguish the different “registers” of language. Every language in the world, according to Martin Joos, has five registers. The same five. Of those, we will be concerned with two: the “formal” and the “casual.” The formal “register” is characterized by “the standard sentence syntax and word choice of work and school. Has complete sentences and specific word choice.” The casual “register” is, like, “language between friends and is characterized by a 400—800-word vocabulary. Word choice general and not specific. Conversation dependent upon non-verbal assists. Sentence syntax often incomplete.”

Do you see where this is going? I come to the word “register” from a music background. I know what it means to play notes in the upper register and the lower register. The idea that one of these registers is, in some way, “better” is ridiculous. And that is why Dr. Payne uses the word “register” to distinguish how middle class kids talk in school from how lower class kids talk. And, speaking now from more than ten years as a professor at an urban university, a university where many of the incoming students are the first in their families to attend college at all, that also distinguishes the way my middle class students write essays from the way my lower class kids write essays.

Now, as I pointed out above, it is hard to “see” poverty and, as a rule, I don’t manage to see it in the classes I teach. I see students who, from all appearances, wasted their K-12 educational years. I see students who are the products and victims of ignorant or apathetic or overburdened teachers. Why, in God’s name, didn’t someone teach these kids how to write a sentence!?! I see students who say “y’know” when the question of the moment is whether they know; they “refer” to things I am trying to get them to specify. Those are what I see. I don’t see poverty. I don’t even see the inappropriate use of “the casual register.”

And if I did, it would blunt significantly the disapproval I feel about these students’ performance. And the satisfaction I take in the writing of the students who “take the trouble to do it correctly.” I want to deal with “good papers” and “bad papers” and I want to praise the former and condemn the latter. The whole notion of language “registers” gets in the road of that desire.

That’s what it looks like as a moral problem and in this formulation, I am the one who is doing it wrong. I deny the notion of “register.” I deny the implications of different student “registers” because I am so eager to condemn the bad papers and praise the good ones.

But is this really political psychology? Of course. Let me defer to the redoubtable Joe Allman, the chair of my dissertation committee at the University of Oregon. Just before I went into “the room” to defend my dissertation, Joe characterized it as “two parts competent and one part brilliant.” I was anxious. It was the day before a make or break defense of my last three years of work. I asked, “What is the brilliant part?” He said, “The way you’ve devised to call all of “this”—he gestured to his copy of the dissertation on his desk—‘political science’...brilliant!”

Let’s look at Bob Herbert’s formulation. Some people, “poor and poorly educated black Americans” are “facing problems.” It’s a shame, but there it is. The “wider population,” that’s us, has the resources to deal with this problem, but not the will. There is “very little sentiment” for tackling these problems. Herbert argues that “the black community,” widely believed to have insufficient resources for dealing with “poor and poorly educated black Americans” should address this problem because they do have the will. Or Herbert thinks they should have the will. And on what basis? Justice. The black community should demand “justice” on a wide front—employment, education and the criminal justice system. It didn’t take very long to get that political, did it? And, you’ll notice that by the introduction of “justice,” we are also back to “moral” as well.

Now let’s pick up Richard Neustadt in closing. I have all these students who can’t write. For me, it isn’t really a racial question. The middle class black students I get are fine. The poor students I get, regardless of their race, are not fine. They are truly awful essayists and I have to read the essays. It's rubbing salt in the wound—and my doctor says I should be cutting down on salt. Neustadt’s question is, “What are the alternatives?” And, more potently, "who controls our notions of what the alternatives are?"

There are the ones I come naturally to. I don’t approve of being stuck with these alternatives, as you’ve noticed, but they are completely authentic. I take the students as they come. I take the papers as they come. I spend on the papers the time “real professors” can’t afford to spend to convey to the students that someone actually cares and they are doing this well and that poorly. I identify good behavior and reward it and identify bad behavior and punish it...I mean I allow the natural consequences to follow. I am not part of “the wider population” who does not have the will to confront this. I am one dedicated professional fighting the fight against sloth and indifference. Those are the alternatives.

For Herbert, the alternatives are different. The problem is there. The “wider population” has no taste for dealing with it, although its effects effect them both directly and indirectly. The alternative is for the black community to rise up in holy wrath and demand justice. Those are the alternatives. The problem continues to get worse because of white indifference or the problem begins to be addressed because of black vigilance.

This puts Herbert, with whom I agree wholeheartedly in principle, and me in direct opposition. Neustadt is calling the balls and strikes. Into this dispute comes Ruby Payne, who says that “the casual register” is the first language of poor kids. It isn’t wrong any more than notes above middle C are wrong. But it isn’t adequate for the lives the children aspire to lead, either, nor the lives we want to have available to them. Someone needs to teach them the formal register and to do it not because it is “right” but because they will have need of it.

Way to go, Ruby.