Ain't We Got Class

This article in the Times got us talking at the dinner table last night. Ruby Payne, the subject of the article, teaches teachers about class in order to make them more able to reach students not of their own background. She takes a pretty simple approach:

At the heart of Payne’s philosophy is a one-page chart, titled “Hidden Rules Among Classes,” which appears in most of her books. There are three columns, for poverty, middle class and wealth, and 15 rows, covering everything from time to love to money to language. In a few words, Payne explains how each class sees each concept. Humor in poverty? About people and sex. In the middle class? About situations. In wealth? About social faux pas. In poverty, the present is most important. In the middle class, it’s the future. In wealth, it’s the past. The key question about food in poverty: Did you have enough? In the middle class: Did you like it? In wealth: Was it presented well?

Rob found himself sympathizing with Payne's critics, who say that by talking about what may be seen as stereotypes, you perpetuate the notion of class and the problem of poverty without addressing its causes.

While I don't disagree with that, I do see the merit in what she says. Ultimately, the way you get power is learn to understand and act like the people who have it. This is true as much for race (Joe Biden called Barack Obama "articulate," as if most black public figures aren't--but what I think he was quite likely reacting to is the fact that Obama talks like Biden and all the other white political figures, rather than like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton--who are both without question articulate, but don't talk anything like Joe Biden); for sex (girls who want to succeed in business beyond the mid level had better learn to shake hands like men, speak up like men, etc.); as it is for socioeconomic class. Same is true in the microcosm of school: you want to be one of the popular kids? Start dressing and acting like them. Ruby Payne is pointing out that some things that may seem self-evident to a middle-class school teacher may not be obvious to students from poverty; she is telling them how to teach their students to "pass" as middle class, because that's how you get in.

Perhaps some discomfort with Payne's approach also stems from the fact that as a nation we like to think the lines of class are nonexistent, or at least blurred. Defining class with such specificity denies that.

(I think it's interesting too that the article notes that Payne has made a lot of money on talking about class. Is that wrong? Isn't that what many people aspire to do--climb the socioeconomic ladder? It's not as if she has stolen money from poor people to become wealthy. But perhaps envy of the rich is on her list of traits of the middle class.)

There's also the matter of the fine line between characteristics and stereotypes. But again, that's an issue that relates to race and sex as well. Some years ago, a male writer colleague was assigned to write a story from a female viewpoint in order to help him develop better female characters in his stories. He plied the female writers in the group with questions about biology--menstruation, etc. Which was missing the point. As I told him then, the difference is less in our biology (some of us menstruate, some don't; some have babies, some don't) than in our experience of the world. For example: the women were told not to walk alone on campus late at night. The men weren't. We were considered to be inherently at greater--or different--risk simply by being female. It's a given, not something most of us go around thinking about, it's just part of the background noise of life. And it's different than being male. Not a stereotype, but a way we interact differently with our world. So it's not a stretch to think that people who worry where their next meal is coming from might as a group be inclined to think about food differently than those who don't.

Yes, there's something fundamentally unpleasant about people having to learn to pass for something else, to give up their own values and lifestyles, in order to get an education. And it certainly addresses the symptoms of poverty without addressing the root causes that perpetuate it. But the fact is that, as noted above, unpalatable as it may be, it works. And until people who have the experience of poverty--of any kind of powerlessness--become a significant portion of the group that hold power--economic or any other sort--there won't be significant progress in addressing the fundamental issues of poverty and discrimination.

So it's a start. And we have to start somewhere, because students from poverty are falling farther and farther behind. And all of us in society suffer the consequences of that.