The Pedagogy of Poverty Versus Good Teaching

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It will be formidably difficult to institutionalize new forms of pedagogy for the children of poverty, but it is worthwhile to define and describe such alternatives.

By Martin Haberman This article Why is a “minor” issue like improving the quality of urban teaching generally overlooked by the popu- was originally lar reform and restructuring strategies? There are several possibilities. First, we assume that we know what published as teaching is, that others know what it is, that we are discussing the same “thing” when we use the word, and “The Pedagogy that we would all know good teaching if we saw it. Second, we believe that, since most teachers cannot be of Poverty Versus Good Teaching” by changed anyway, there must be other, more potent, teacher-proof strategies for change. Third, why bother Martin Haberman. with teaching if research shows that achievement test Phi Delta Kappan scores of poor and minority youngsters are affected 73, no. 4 (December primarily by their socioeconomic class; affected 1991): 290-294. somewhat by Head Start, school integration, and having a “strong” principal; and affected almost not at all by the quality of their teachers?

THE PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY An observer of urban classrooms can find exam- ples of almost every form of pedagogy: direct instruction, cooperative learning, peer tutoring, individual- ized instruction, computer-assisted learning, behavior modification, the use of student contracts, media- assisted instruction, scientific inquiry, lecture/discussion, tutoring by specialists or volunteers, and even the use of problem-solving units common in progres- Deepen your sive education. In spite of this broad range of options, understanding of however, there is a typical form of teaching that has this article with become accepted as basic. Indeed, this basic urban questions and style, which encompasses a body of specific teacher activities on page acts, seems to have grown stronger each year since I PD 16 of this first noted it in 1958. A teacher in an urban school of month’s Kappan the 1990s who did not engage in these basic acts as Professional Development the primary means of instruction would be regarded Discussion Guide as deviant. In most urban schools, not performing by Lois Brown these acts for most of each day would be considered Easton, free to prima facie evidence of not teaching. members in the Thinkstock/iStockphotos digital edition at kappanmagazine MARTIN HABERMAN is a distinguished professor emeritus of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. .org.

kappanmagazine.org V92 N2 Kappan 81 The teaching acts that constitute the core • Record-keeping is the systematic functions of urban teaching are: maintenance of a paper trail to protect • Giving information, the school against any future legal action by its clients. Special classes, • Asking questions, referrals, test scores, disciplinary • Giving directions, actions, and analyses by specialists must • Making assignments, be carefully recorded. This slant is the • Monitoring seatwork, reason that teachers are commonly • Reviewing assignments, prejudiced rather than informed by • Giving tests, reading student records; yet the system regards their upkeep as vital. (In • Reviewing tests, teacher preparation, neophytes are • Assigning homework, actually taught that student records will • Reviewing homework, reveal such valuable information as • Settling disputes, students’ interests!) • Punishing noncompliance, • Parent conferences give parents who • Marking papers, and are perceived as poorly educated or otherwise inadequate a chance to have • Giving grades. Whenever things explained to them. This basic menu of urban teacher func- students are involved • Staff meetings give administrators tions characterizes all levels and subjects. A in planning what they opportunities to explain things to primary teacher might “give information” by will be doing, it is teachers. reading a story to children, while a high likely that good • Assorted school duties are essentially school teacher might read to the class from a teaching is going on. police or monitoring activities that biology text. (Interestingly, both offer simi- would be better performed by hired lar reasons: “The students can’t read for • guards. themselves,” and “They enjoy being read Whenever students The pedagogy of poverty appeals to sev- to.”) Taken separately, there may be nothing are involved with eral constituencies: wrong with these activities. There are occa- explanations of sions when any one of the 14 1. It appeals to those who themselves did human differences, acts might have a beneficial ef- not do well in schools. People who have fect. Taken together and per- good teaching is been brutalized are usually not rich If the pedagogy of formed to the systematic exclu- going on. sources of compassion. And those who poverty will not sion of other acts, they have be- have failed or done poorly in school do force the learning of come the pedagogical coin of not typically take personal responsibility low-level skills, how the realm in urban schools. for that failure. They generally find it can it be used to They constitute the pedagogy easier to believe that they would have compel genuine of poverty — not merely what succeeded if only somebody had forced thinking? teachers do and what young- them to learn. sters expect but, for different 2. It appeals to those who rely on common reasons, what parents, the com- sense rather than on thoughtful analysis. munity, and the general public assume teach- It is easy to criticize humane and ing to be. developmental teaching aimed at Ancillary to this system is a set of out-of- educating a free people as mere class teacher acts that include keeping “permissiveness,” and it is well known records, conducting parent conferences, at- that “permissiveness” is the root cause tending staff meetings, and carrying out as- of our nation’s educational problems. sorted school duties. While these out-of-class functions are not directly instructional, they 3. It appeals to those who fear minorities are performed in ways that support the ped- and the poor. Bigots typically become agogy of poverty. Since this analysis deals obsessed with the need for control. with the direct interactions characteristic of 4. It appeals to those who have low urban teachers and their students, I will limit expectations for minorities and the myself to a brief comment about how each of poor. People with limited vision these out-of-class functions is typically con- frequently see value in limited and ceptualized and performed in urban settings. limiting forms of pedagogy. They

82 Kappan October 2010 kappanmagazine.org Thinkstock/iStockphotos believe that at-risk students are served sources of encouragement transform them- best by a directive, controlling selves into directive authoritarians in order to pedagogy. function in urban schools. But people who 5. It appeals to those who do not know the choose to become teachers do not do so be- full range of pedagogical options cause at some point they decided, “I want to available. This group includes most be able to tell people what to do all day and school administrators, most business then make them do it!” This and political reformers, and many gap between expectations and teachers. reality means that there is a per- vasive, fundamental, irreconcil- Below the façade of There are essentially four syllogisms that able difference between the control by teachers undergird the pedagogy of poverty. Their motivation of those who select is another, more “logic” runs something like this. themselves to become teachers powerful level on and the demands of urban which students 1. Teaching is what teachers do. teaching. actually control, Learning is what students do. For the reformers who manage, and shape Therefore, students and teachers seek higher scores on the behavior of their are engaged in different activities. achievement tests, the teachers. 2. Teachers are in charge and pedagogy of poverty is a responsible. Students are those source of continual frus- who still need to develop tration. The clear-cut appropriate behavior. Therefore, need to “make” students learn is so ob- when students follow teachers’ viously vital to the common good and to directions, appropriate behavior is the students themselves that surely (it is being taught and learned. believed) there must be a way to force students to work hard enough to vindi- 3. Students represent a wide range of cate the methodology. Simply stated, we individual differences. Many act as if it is not the pedagogy that must students have handicapping be fitted to the students but the students who Whenever conditions and lead debilitating home must accept an untouchable method. lives. Therefore, ranking of some sort is teachers involve In reality, the pedagogy of poverty is not inevitable; some students will end up at students with the a professional methodology at all. It is not the bottom of the class while others will technology of supported by research, by theory, or by the finish at the top. information access, best practice of superior urban teachers. It is 4. Basic skills are a prerequisite for good teaching is actually certain ritualistic acts that, much like learning and living. Students are not the ceremonies performed by religious func- going on. necessarily interested in basic skills. tionaries, have come to be conducted for their Therefore, directive pedagogy must be • intrinsic value rather than to foster learning. used to ensure that youngsters are Whenever students There are those who contend that the ped- compelled to learn their basic skills are actively involved agogy of poverty would work if only the youngsters accepted it and worked at it. “Ay, in heterogeneous REFORM AND THE PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY there’s the rub!” Students in urban schools Unfortunately, the pedagogy of poverty groups, it is likely overwhelmingly do accept the pedagogy of does not work. Youngsters achieve neither that good teaching is poverty, and they do work at it! Indeed, any minimum levels of life skills nor what they going on. teacher who believes that he or she can take are capable of learning. The classroom at- on an urban teaching assignment and ignore mosphere created by constant teacher direc- the pedagogy of poverty will be quickly tion and student compliance seethes with pas- crushed by the students themselves. Exam- sive resentment that sometimes bubbles up ples abound of inexperienced teachers who into overt resistance. Teachers burn out be- seek to involve students in genuine learning cause of the emotional and physical energy activities and are met with apathy or bedlam, that they must expend to maintain their au- while older hands who announce, “Take out thority every hour of every day. The peda- your dictionaries and start to copy the words gogy of poverty requires that teachers who that begin with h,” are regarded with compli- begin their careers intending to be helpers, ance or silence. models, guides, stimulators, and caring Reformers of urban schools are now rais-

kappanmagazine.org V92 N2 Kappan 83 ing their expectations beyond an emphasis on hanced and elicited by an authoritarian ped- basic skills to the teaching of critical think- agogy and do not represent students’ true or ing, problem solving, and even creativity. But ultimate natures. Young people can become if the pedagogy of poverty will not force the more and different, but they must be taught learning of low-level skills, how can it be used how. This means to me that two conditions to compel genuine thinking? Heretofore, re- must pertain before there can be a serious al- formers have promulgated change ternative to the pedagogy of poverty: strategies that deal with the level of fund- The whole school faculty and school ing, the role of the principal, parent in- community — not the individual teacher volvement, decentralization, site-based — must be the unit of change; and there management, choice, and other organi- must be patience and persistence of ap- zational and policy reforms. At some plication, since students can be expected point, they must reconsider the issue of to resist changes to a system they can pedagogy. If the actual mode of instruc- predict and know how to control. Hav- tion expected by school administrators ing learned to navigate in urban schools and teachers and de- based on the pedagogy of poverty, stu- manded by students and dents will not readily abandon all their Any teacher who their parents continues to know-how to take on willy-nilly some believes that he or be the present one, then new and uncertain system that they may she can take on an reform will continue to not be able to control. urban teaching deal with all but the cen- For any analysis of pedagogical re- assignment and tral issue: How and what form to have meaning in urban schools, ignore the pedagogy are students taught? it’s necessary to understand something of poverty will be The pedagogy of poverty is Whenever students of the dynamics of the teacher/student inter- quickly crushed by sufficiently powerful to under- are being helped to actions in those schools. The authoritarian the students mine the implementation of and directive nature of the pedagogy of see major themselves. any reform effort because it de- poverty is somewhat deceptive about who is termines the way pupils spend concepts, big really in charge. Teachers seem to be in their time, the nature of the be- ideas, and general charge, in that they direct students to work haviors they practice, and the principles and are on particular tasks, allot time, dispense ma- bases of their self-concepts as learners. Es- not merely engaged terials, and choose the means of evaluation to sentially, it is a pedagogy in which learners in the pursuit of be used. It is assumed by many that having can “succeed” without becoming either in- control over such factors makes teacher “de- isolated facts, good volved or thoughtful. cision makers” who somehow shape the be- teaching is going havior of their students. THE NATURE OF URBAN CHILDREN AND YOUTH on. But below this façade of control is another, When he accepted the 1990 New York • more powerful level on which students actu- City Teacher of the Year Award, John Taylor ally control, manage, and shape the behavior Whenever students Gatto stated that no school reform will work of their teachers. Students reward teachers by that does not provide children time to grow are asked to think complying. They punish by resisting. In this up or that simply forces them to deal with ab- about an idea in a way, students mislead teachers into believing stractions. Without blaming the victims, he way that questions that some things “work” while other things described his students as lacking curiosity common sense or a do not. By this dynamic, urban children and (having “evanescent attention”), being indif- widely accepted youth effectively negate the values promoted ferent to the adult world, and having a poor in their teachers’ teacher education and un- assumption, that sense of the future. He further characterized dermine the nonauthoritarian predisposi- them as ahistorical, cruel and lacking in com- relates new ideas to tions that led their teachers to enter the field. passion, uneasy with intimacy and candor, ones learned And yet, most teachers are not particularly materialistic, dependent, and passive — al- previously, or that sensitive to being manipulated by students. though they frequently mask the last two applies an idea to They believe they are in control and are re- traits with a surface bravado. the problems of sponding to “student needs,” when, in fact, Anyone who would propose specific forms they are more like hostages responding to the living, then there is of teaching as alternatives to the pedagogy of students’ overt or tacit threats of noncompli- poverty must recognize that Gatto’s descrip- a chance that good ance and, ultimately, disruption. tion of his students is only the starting point. teaching is It cannot be emphasized enough that, in These are the attributes that have been en- going on. the real world, urban teachers are never de-

84 Kappan October 2010 kappanmagazine.org Thinkstock/Hemera fined as incompetent because their “de- unsophisticated visitor, seem to be merely ob- prived,” “disadvantaged,” “abused,” “low-in- servers. Good teaching transcends the partic- come” students are not learning. Instead, ur- ular grade or subject and even the need for ban teachers are castigated because they can- lessons with specific purposes (Raths 1971). not elicit compliance. Once schools made Whenever students are involved with issues teacher competence synonymous with stu- they regard as vital concerns, good teaching is go- dent control, it was inevitable that students ing on. In effective schools, the would sense who was really in charge. endless “problems” — the cen- The students’ stake in maintaining the soring of a school newspaper, an The pedagogy of pedagogy of poverty is of the strongest pos- issue of school safety, a racial poverty requires sible kind: It absolves them of responsibility flare-up, the dress code — are that teachers who for learning and puts the burden on the teach- opportunities for important begin their careers ers, who must be accountable for making learning. In good schools, intending to be them learn. In their own unknowing but problems are not viewed as helpers, models, crafty way, students do not want to trade occasions to impose more guides, stimulators, a system in which they can make their rules and tighter manage- and caring sources teachers ineffective for one in which ment from above. Far from of encouragement they would themselves become account- being viewed as obstacles transform able and responsible for what they learn. to the “normal” school themselves into It would be risky for students to swap a routine, difficult events directive “try and make me” system for one that and issues are transformed authoritarians in says, “Let’s see how well and how much into the very stuff of the order to function in you really can do.” curriculum. Schooling is urban schools. Recognizing the formidable diffi- living, not preparation for culty of institutionalizing other forms of living. And living is a con- pedagogy, it is still worthwhile to define stant messing with problems that seem and describe such alternative forms. The to resist solution. few urban schools that serve as models Whenever students are involved with ex- of student learning have teachers who planations of human differences, good teach- maintain control by establishing trust and in- Whenever students ing is going on. As students proceed through volving their students in meaningful activi- are involved with school, they should be developing ever ties rather than by imposing some neat sys- applying ideals greater understanding of human differences. tem of classroom discipline. For genuinely ef- Why are there rich people and poor people, such as fairness, fective urban teachers, discipline and control abled and disabled, urban and rural, multilin- are primarily a consequence of their teaching equity, or justice to gual and monolingual, highly educated and and not a prer equisite condition of learning. their world, it is poorly educated? Differences in race, culture, Control, internal or imposed, is a continuous likely that good religion, ethnicity, and gender are issues that fact of life in urban classrooms — but, for teaching is going children and youths reconsider constantly in these teachers, it is completely interrelated on. an effort to make sense of the world, its rela- with the learning activity at hand. tionships, and their place in it. This is not “so- • cial studies.” All aspects of the curriculum GOOD TEACHING Whenever students should deepen students’ basic understand- Is it possible to describe a teaching ap- are actively ings of these persistent facts of life. proach that can serve as an alternative to the involved, it is likely Whenever students are being helped to see ma- pedagogy of poverty? I believe that there is a jor concepts, big ideas, and general principles and that good teaching core of teacher acts that defines the pedagogy are not merely engaged in the pursuit of isolated one finds in urban schools that have been rec- is going on. facts, good teaching is going on. At all levels and ognized as exemplary. Unlike the directive in all subjects, key concepts can be made teacher acts that constitute the pedagogy of meaningful and relevant. Students cannot be poverty, however, these tend to be indirect successful graduates without having at some activities that frequently involve the creation point been exposed to the various forms of of a learning environment. These teaching knowledge. Historians deal with the nature behaviors tend to be evident more in what the of sources; artists, with texture, color, and de- students are doing than in the observable ac- sign. A fundamental goal of education is to tions of the teacher. Indeed, teachers may ap- instill in students the ability to use various and pear to be doing little and at times may, to the competing ways of understanding the uni-

kappanmagazine.org V92 N2 Kappan 85 verse. Knowing how to spell is not enough. ing is going on. Students benefit from expo- Whenever students are involved in planning sure to cultural as well as intellectual hetero- what they will be doing, it is likely that good teach- geneity, and they learn from one another. Di- ing is going on. This planning involves real vergent questioning strategies, multiple as- choices and not such simple preferences as signments in the same class, activities that al- what crayon to use or the order in which a set low for alternative responses and solutions all of topics will be discussed. Students may contribute to learning. Grouping in be asked to select a topic for study, to de- schools is frequently based on artificial cide what resources they will need, or to criteria that are not used in life. Group- plan how they will present their findings ing can either limit or enhance students’ to others. People learn to make informed self-concept and self-esteem and thus choices by actually making informed has a powerful effect on future learning. choices. Following directions — even Whenever students are asked to think perfectly — does not pre- about an idea in a way that questions compare people to make mon sense or a widely accepted assumption, choices and to deal with that relates new ideas to ones learned previ- Education will be the consequences of those ously, or that applies an idea to the problems seriously reformed choices. of living, then there is a chance that good only after we move Whenever students are in- Whenever students teaching is going on. Students are taught to it from a matter of volved with applying ideals such as are directly involved compare, analyze, synthesize, evaluate, gen- “importance” to a fairness, equity, or justice to their eralize, and specify in the process of develop- in a real-life matter of “life and world, it is likely that good teaching thinking skills. The effort to educate death,” both for ing is going on. Students of any experience, it thoughtful people should be guided by school society and for the age can, at some level, try to ap- is likely that good activities that involve thought. The acquisi- individuals ply great ideals to their every- teaching is tion of information — even of skills — with- themselves. day lives. The environment, going on. out the ability to think is an insufficient foun- war, human relationships, and dation for later life. health care are merely a few ex- Whenever students are involved in redoing, amples of issues that students polishing, or perfecting their work, it is likely that can be thinking about. Determining what good teaching is going on. It is in the act of re- should be done about particular matters and view, particularly review of one’s own work, defending their ideas publicly gives students that important learning occurs. This tech- experience in developing principles to live by. nique may involve an art project or a science Character is built by students who have had experiment as well as a piece of writing. The practice at comparing ideals with reality in successful completion of anything worth- their own lives and in the lives of those around while rarely occurs in a single trial. Students them. can learn that doing things over is not pun- Whenever students are actively involved, it is ishment but an opportunity to excel. likely that good teaching is going on. Doing an Whenever teachers involve students with the experiment is infinitely better than watching technology of information access, good teaching is one or reading about one. Participating as a going on. Teachers, texts, and libraries as they reporter, a role player, or an actor can be ed- now exist will not be sufficient in the future. ucational. Constructing things can be a vital Computer literacy — beyond word process- activity. We need graduates who have learned ing — is a vital need. As James Mecklenburger to take action in their own behalf and in be- points out, “Electronic learning must play a half of others. more important part in the mix, even at the Whenever students are directly involved in a expense of customary practices. Today, stu- real-life experience, it is likely that good teaching dents and educators alike can create, receive, is going on. Field trips, interactions with re- collect, and share data, text, images, and source people, and work and life experiences sounds on myriad topics in ways more stim- are all potentially vital material for analysis. ulating, richer, and more timely than ever be- Firsthand experience is potentially more ed- fore” (1990: 108). ucational than vicarious activity, provided it is Whenever students are involved in reflecting combined with reflection. on their own lives and how they have come to be- Whenever students are actively involved in lieve and feel as they do, good teaching is going on. heterogeneous groups, it is likely that good teach- Autobiography can be the basis of an exceed-

86 Kappan October 2010 kappanmagazine.org Thinkstock/Valueline ingly powerful pedagogy — one that is largely own responsibilities as narrowly as possible discarded after early childhood education. to guarantee itself “success” and leave to oth- When critics dismiss my characterization of ers the broad and difficult responsibility for the pedagogy of poverty as an exaggeration, integrating students’ total educations. I am reminded of an immense sign hanging Who is responsible for seeing that stu- in an urban high school that has devoted it- dents derive meaning and apply what they self totally to raising test scores: “We dispense have learned from this frag- knowledge. Bring your own container.” This mented, highly specialized, approach is the opposite of good teaching, overly directive schooling? It is which is the process of building environ- not an accident that the present The classroom ments, providing experiences, and then elic- system encourages each con- atmosphere created iting responses that can be reflected on. stituency to blame another by constant teacher Autobiographical activities are readily for the system’s failure. My direction and extended into studies of family, neigh- argument here is that re- student compliance borhood, and community. What could forms will “take” only if seethes with be more fundamental to subsequent they are supported by a passive resentment learning than self-definition? Urban system of pedagogy that that sometimes schools, in the way they narrowly struc- has never been tried in any bubbles up into ture the role of the teacher and restrict widespread, systematic, overt resistance. the content to be taught, too frequently long-term way. What pre- repudiate the students and their home vents its implementation is lives. The vision of good teaching as a the resistance of the con- process of “drawing out” rather than stituencies involved — constituencies “stuffing in” is supported by diverse philoso- Whenever students that have a stake in maintaining their present phies, including, most recently, feminist the- are involved in roles, since they are, in effect, unaccountable ories of the teaching/learning process redoing, polishing, or for educating skilled, thoughtful citizens. (Grumet 1988: 99). Continuing to define nonthinking, under- perfecting their work, developed, unemployable youngsters as THE REWARDS OF NOT CHANGING it is likely that good “adults” or “citizens” simply because they are Taken individually, any of these indicators teaching is going on. high school graduates or passers of the Gen- of good teaching is not a sufficient basis for • eral Education Development (GED) exami- proposing reform. We all know teachers who nation is irresponsible. Education will be se- Whenever students have done some of these things — as well as riously reformed only after we move it from other, better things — for years. Taken to- are involved with a matter of “importance” to a matter of “life gether and practiced schoolwide and persist- issues they regard as and death,” both for society and for the indi- ently, however, these suggestions can begin vital concerns, good viduals themselves. Graduates who lack basic to create an alternative to the pedagogy of teaching is going on. skills may be unemployable and represent a poverty. personal and societal tragedy. However, Unfortunately, we must recognize that it graduates who possess basic skills but are par- may no longer be possible to give up the pres- tially informed, unable to think, and inca- ent authoritarianism. The incentives for the pable of making moral choices are downright various constituencies involved may well dangerous. Before we can make workers, we have conditioned them to derive strong ben- must first make people. But people are not efits from the pedagogy of poverty and to see made — they are conserved and grown. K only unknown risk in the options. In the present system, teachers are ac- REFERENCES countable only for engaging in the limited set of behaviors commonly regarded as acts of Grumet, Madeleine. Women and Teaching. Amherst, teaching in urban schools — that is, the ped- Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. agogy of poverty. Students can be held ac- Mecklenburger, James A. “Educational Technology Is countable only for complying with precisely Not Enough.” Phi Delta Kappan 72, no. 2 (October what they have specifically and carefully been 1990): 104-108. directed to do. Administrators can be held accountable only for maintaining safe build- Raths, James D. “Teaching Without Specific ings; parents, only for knowing where their Objectives.” Educational Leadership 28, no. 7 (April children are. Each constituency defines its 1971): 714-720.

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