Addressing the "Culture of Poverty" Myth and Using Documentary Films

Disrupting the Stereotypes of Poverty

Jennifer Parrill Lopez

* As a class, we choose to employ person-first language and avoid terminology with negative connotations.  However, direct quotes of other authors remain unaltered.

            If you’ve been identified as Appalachian, people think they know a little something about you.  Drawing on the common stereotype, they may assume that you are poor, uneducated, lazy, and welfare dependent.  We have studied how critical literacy and Place Based Education give our students the opportunity to unpack these stereotypes, explore the fallacy of an “Appalachian Culture,” and view themselves as participants who influence the body of work that surrounds their identity. 

This week, we applied a similar lens to the stigma of poverty through reading selections from Paul Gorski’s Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap, specifically Chapter 4 “The Trouble with the ‘Culture of Poverty’ and Other Stereotypes about People in Poverty” and Chapter 9 “The Mother of All Strategies: Committing to Working With Rather than On Families in Poverty.”  Like “Appalachian,” poverty has been misidentified as a culture whose inherent weakness must be remedied from the outside.  Once we understand the myth of the “culture of poverty,” we as pre-service teachers can begin to interrogate and remedy our deficit view of students and families living in material poverty.

Why is it important for educators to critically consider the social stigma and prevailing inaccuracies surrounding poverty?  We, though teachers, are unwitting consumers of this false model.  As Brandi stated,

“Unlearning prejudices and stereotypes takes years, but we have to do it if we want to serve our kids well and not just be nice to them.  We grow up with a single narrative of what poor people are like, what Appalachians are like, and we constantly have to redress that.”

Brittany expressed a need for this self-awareness, “I will need to push all my students, no matter what I know about their background and home life.”  If we allow our assumptions to inform pedagogy, then lower expectations of students living in poverty result in a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Gorski credits Oscar Lewis with coining the term “culture of poverty” in his 1959 work Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty and many theorists have since based their work on this concept of a shared set of traits among those in poverty.  However, subsequent research has determined that “poor people* do not share a predictable, consistent culture” (55).  Nevertheless, “the same type of application of Lewis’s work survives today in (Ruby) Payne’s (2005) mind-set of poverty model, which claims that poverty is attributable, not to inequities or to an unequal distribution of opportunity or even to educational access disparities, but to the problematic ‘culture’ of poor families”*(54). 

            Gorski identifies five stereotypes associated with families in poverty and education – stereotypes that insidiously affect how we teach and interact with our students:

·      Stereotype 1: Poor People* Do Not Value Education

·      Stereotype 2: Poor People Are Lazy

·      Stereotype 3: Poor People Are Substance Abusers

·      Stereotype 4: Poor People Are Linguistically Deficient and Poor Communicators

·      Stereotype 5: Poor People Are Ineffective and Inattentive Parents

Of these, Stereotype 5 was predominant in our roundtable discussion as we examined how the structure of the school system disenfranchises those in poverty, the idea being that school is a system of social reproduction. “School is a place where the differences should be set aside, but really is put center stage, for instance with fundraisers” observed Brittany.  Carmen expressed the need to engage parents as equal partners.  This means considering the compatibility between the structure of parents’ lives and the structure of the school schedule.  Is the school structure incompatible with the availability of transportation and work demands? Home visits were suggested as a minimum effort for the elementary level, and suitable for at risk students at the secondary level.  Dr. Slocum pointed out that, “Being informed specifically about a person’s life enables you to make connections with your students…it takes a lot of practice to learn how to be in community with someone rather than about someone.” 

So we are left to dismantle our own misperceptions in preparation for teaching.  Dr. Slocum asks us,

“As a teacher, as an ethnographer – how are things working here, how are we interacting [in class with our students]? How do we experience whiteness? Class? Collecting data points and constantly testing – what am I being told about this person and by whom?  Does this actually make sense and why might this person be telling me this?  Kids make the same judgments about themselves and their classmates – develop facts and counter facts and set up a narrative about poverty that questions stereotypes rather than perpetuates them.”

This two-fold approach is challenging, not only because it means crafting a curriculum of social consciousness, but also because it demands a level of introspection that can be uncomfortable.  For instance, Carmen described her mother’s responsibilities as a school psychologist, making home visits to monitor students living in material poverty.  In order to clarify, I asked, “Assessing for neglect?”  My underlying belief was revealed - children living in poverty are at a higher risk for neglect.  When Brandi quickly amended with “impoverishment,” I realized my assumption.  This is what I mean by insidious.  We are hardly aware of our beliefs, but it is revealed through our actions and words.  This is where pretending to be socially just will fail and parents and students will see through the façade of “niceness”.

            Although there was predominant agreement with the position of the chapters, there was some discomfort with the representation of “middle class”.  Audra C. felt that Gorski, “constructed a ‘culture of wealth’ while attempting to dismantle the ‘culture of poverty’ – there’s no room for people who are not low SES to continue to interact and learn.”  Caleb asked, “Is there a ‘middle class culture’, but not a ‘culture of poverty’?”  Sam felt that the idea of social class bore further scrutiny, “What gets lost is that social class is a representation, an appearance like suburban-ism – one of the structures that creates poverty is the educational system itself – by privileging the suburban middle class ideal.”  If we are working to disrupt stereotypes surrounding low income, surely we should strive to abandon all misconceptions associated with class and socioeconomic status.

            So, we’ll continue to do the work and catch ourselves out – not just for the remainder of the semester, but for years to come.  Gorski mentions the ease with which we denounce those outside of our own group.  Will critical literacy and Place Based Education enable teachers and students to stop identifying with the group, and start identifying with individuals?  It’s a start.

Media Literacy Resources

            Film representations of the Appalachia often reinforce inaccurate stereotypes, focus heavily on mining issues, and center on historical rather than contemporary events.  Using film as an alternative text in the PBE classroom facilitates the dismantling of the falsely constructed image of Appalachia that reaches a broad audience through media.  Below are some suggested resources for media literacy/PBE lessons.

Films

Harlan County, USA (1976)

www.imdb.com/title/tt0074605/

Matewan (1987)

www.imdb.com/title/tt0093509/

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (2009)

www.imdb.com/title/tt1396227/

These and other titles can be found at Amazon, iTunes, youtube, and appalshop.org.
Media Literacy Questions for Analyzing Point of View:
PBS: Media Literacy Questions

Book Review 2: The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart by M. Glenn Taylor

The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart

By M. Glenn Taylor

Published: 2001

274 pages

            The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart by M. Glenn Taylor is a delicate balance of historical folklore set in the hills of southern West Virginia starting in the early 1900’s.  It is the lifelong story of a man outcast from society at the early age of two months.  Said to have spoken in the devil’s tongue at his christening, Trenchmouth finds himself orphaned to a widow who seems to be one of the few in their town accepting of his unsightly oral disease, trench mouth.

            Trenchmouth is taught how to shoot, sip shine, and survive off the land within the Appalachia region of West Virginia and Kentucky.  He struggles to adapt to the ever-changing norms of society while constantly on the run for crimes that some may have considered just.  Despite his frequent run-ins with the law, Trenchmouth finds himself learning life and musical skills from the best including Sid Hatfield and Hank Williams.

            As he moves from town to town, displaying his skills a musician and writer, Trenchmouth must come to terms with his inability to stay close to those he loves and the destruction of the mountains he once called home.  The Ballard of Trenchmouth Taggart is a striking account of how the traditions of Appalachia can be confused and lost in the outside world’s need to expand and understand anything that is foreign to it.

Incorporating the Text in an ELA Classroom:

            This is an extensive novel, not so much in its page length, but the time periods that it covers.  Divided into three sections, the novel highlights T.T.’s (Trenchmouth Taggart’s) childhood, adulthood and eventual old age.  There are many shifts in society that some students may not be familiar with.  Personally, I had to research some of the events that occurred within the novel to better understand them.  There is a delicate balance between what is real and what is fiction.  Taylor is able to place T.T. into historically events that, unless I looked it up, I would have not known were true.  One such example is T.T.’s involvement in the Battle of Matewan.  How much T.T. influences the outcome of it is up to the reader’s imagination.

            Because of this there may be a need for students to participate in some front-loading while reading the novel.  It would help to gain perspective on what students know about the historical events before they read about T.T.’s involvement in them.  That way the teacher can clarify any discrepancy or uncertainty about the events they read.  The flow and context of the novel would be much easier for students to understand if they were to gain some historical insight to the events covered.  Having said that, the novel lends itself well to the possibility of a cross disciplinary study with a historical subject.  It is important that students do gain some historical insight before and while reading this novel.

            There is one main occurrence that may not be appropriate for any grade lower than 11^th, and even then that may be pushing it.  The first third of the novel is an account of T.T.’s boyhood and his development as a teenager sexually.  As mentioned before, T.T. has the uncanny ability to speak in the tongue of the devil, or in other words, snakes.  When ladies hear of T.T.’s unusual talent they find him and pay him generously to demonstrate it.  I won’t go into any further details as I think an older audience can deduce what T.T.’s explicit business was.

            However, the book’s layout does provide the opportunity for a teacher to explicitly choose sections for students to study.  As previously mentioned, the book is dissected into three different sections, each pertaining to a part of T.T.’s life.  The sections of the novel do not rely heavily on one another and certain sections can be chosen to convey other important themes and motifs.  This gives the teacher discretion to choose which section he or she finds most fitting for a class to study. 

            Aside from its graphic sexual content early in the novel, there are some instances that involve racism and the ever-controversial “n” word.  However, I think this is something that can be looked past as it was part of history and is a truth that students need to have knowledge of. 

            Despite this, the novel is loaded with important themes such as, racism, loss of culture, and displacement, which can be discussed and debated for endless amounts of class periods, especially with students who have ties to the Appalachian region.  It gives great insight into the livelihood of people who relied on the land and were able to fend for themselves in a time period that some people may have come to forget.

            For some reason or another, the Appalachian region has obtained the identity that it is filled with backwards living people who are dim witted and slow.  This novel has several examples that displace this idea and shows readers to not allow outside stereotypes to change your perspective of who you are.  This is a novel that can be used to display the fact that people have different intelligences to adapt to different ways of life.

            Towards the end of the novel, there is a brief mention of the ongoing problem of mountain top removal and strip mining.  This is a significant topic that is relevant for many students today.  It also brings to light the travesty of this process that some people, who don’t live in the region, may not be aware of.  I was curious as to why it was so briefly mentioned and asked the author on what his views are, however I have yet to get a reply.  Whether this topic was intentionally covered briefly or not, it opens up the opportunity to discuss such controversial topics that may arise in the classroom.  In this way we can relate this novel to current events that deal with environmental controversy.  Students can use current events and events that are happening within the community to better relate to the story.

            The book is written in what I thought to be a very unique way.  While the dialogues and dialects very much matched the way you might imagine someone of the Appalachia region to speak, the text did as well.  You got the sense that Taylor himself was a pioneer within the Appalachia region as you read.  One might consider his growing up in Huntington, West Virginia as an influence on this.  This style of writing is something that I think students within an Appalachian region can relate to.  The writing alone can provoke interest in students who may have not seen their dialect represented in a written text.  Students can draw personal connections to a text that follows and represents the stipulations of their community.  I chose one passage from the novel that I think represents a fitting snapshot of the text.

            “Some stood scarecrow still, some ran.  Either way, they were thoroughly discombobulated by the sight of a black boy hitting a white one for insulting his race.  It didn’t happen in Georgia, they were pretty sure, and it didn’t happen in southern West Virginia either.  But it had happened, and Warren Crews lay asleep on the ground, thick blood, chunked by dirt, running from nose to mouth.

            Eventually, they all left their ten-year-old comrade where he lay, only one of them with the wherewithal to shout a promise of revenge.  Arly and Trenchmouth remained.  They looked down at Warren together, the black boy rubbing his throbbing knuckles, the white boy rubbing his head.  This would take some figuring.” (pg 64)

             Like I noted this an Appalachian book that feels like it is written by an Appalachian writer.  The writing is short and to the point, yet gives metaphors and descriptions that we would have probably never considered.  This novel gives readers and teachers the ability to pick and chose how a theme develops through T.T.’s lifetime.  I would highly suggest this book to those who wish to show an Appalachian heritage and region to be proud of. 

Poetry and Place

by Samuel Horrocks

February 15, 2015

As Professor Slocum put it early in our class session this week, one of our great joys as English teachers is the reading, writing, and teaching of poetry, and we spent the rest of our time modeling various strategies for teaching poems with an Appalachian focus. To help us extend our earlier conversations regarding critical place-based pedagogies, Professor Slocum selected two poems presenting the narratives of young Appalachians leaving the mountains for supposedly brighter futures elsewhere. In Mark Defoe’s “Leaving the Hills,” the speaker lamentfully recalls the last hours of a young girl’s life in her hometown, as she “loads / her red Camaro with quilts to pawn” and “serpentines the curves . . . over the interstate.” The experienced speaker of Maggie Anderson’s “Ontological” presents a vaguer warning to a young individual “following some train whistle” in search of “what’s lost.” We also examined a short story by Lisa Koger entitled “Extended Learning,” in which a successful academic returns with his young family to visit his mother at their West Virginian homeplace. Studying these pieces together inspired both lively discussion of the tensions surrounding the issues of rural flight and “brain drain,” and strategies for teaching place-based narratives and poetry dealing with these issues in the secondary Appalachian classroom.

Paired Poetry Analysis

            To start us off, Professors Slocum and Weekley led us through a 30-45 minute lesson plan which can be used with middle and high school students. First the class was grouped into pairs, and each pair assigned one of the two poems. Each group received a large sheet of poster paper upon which a copy of our poem had been pasted in large font. We were then directed to discuss and annotate the poem, paying particular attention to any questions we had, whether they be regarding the meaning of a word, the basic narrative of the poem, or something more interpretive. Professor Slocum stressed to us that poems have no “true” answers but only “tentative” ones: our goal is, by the end of the discussion, to make a claim regarding what the poem is saying by using its text as evidence.

            We passed a pleasant ten minutes or so annotating our poems—animated discussion was heard from pairs around the room, and Professors Slocum and Weekley wandered from group to group offering words of encouragement and advice. When we had finished, all of the poems looked very different, with some featuring more textual annotations, some heavier on interpretive arrows, some asking more questions and yet others providing more explanation. We then shared out, each pair getting a chance to explain their thoughts and methods to the full class. The groups who looked at “Ontological” went first, with each group proffering a different explanation for the significance of the poem’s odd name. Audra said she thought the poem was about a young person pursuing a country music career, and Jen spoke about the significance of the recurring imagery of the fiddle, while others did not notice this aural aspect of the poem at all. The groups looking at “Leaving the Hills,” which was a more straight-forward piece, found similar interpretations, though Jon and Britney thought that the female subject of the poem may have been fleeing some traumatic event.

            We then returned to our seats to continue the discussion, this time with the goal of “imagining what the poems might say to each other.” We first took this prompt quite literally, venturing to guess what a conversation between the speakers and subjects of each poem might look like. This got us thinking about tonal and stylistic differences in the pieces: the speaker of “Ontological” presents a stern warning to his/her “honey,” while the “Hills” narrator is more wistful, lamentful even of the subject’s departure. The question of the “Hills” speaker’s potentially judgmental tone toward his female subject sparked off a lengthy debate. I, Sam, posited that the poem’s frequent use of sexual imagery suggests that the narrator views the subject’s supposed promiscuity negatively, but then Audra drew our attention to the extent to which the subject seems to be fleeing a bad reputation that may not be deserved: while “leaving is a copperhead fear,” “staying” in this “land too wide for whispers” provokes a “deadly . . . bile.” We closed our discussion with a quick writing assignment, in which we were all asked to jot down a concise interpretation of the poem, with emphasis on how the discussion had changed our initial suppositions.

            Professor Slocum then asked us to switch roles from participants to teachers who might one day lead such an activity. She quickly reviewed the outline of the lesson (reading the poetry at home and writing a response, analyzing in pairs, sharing out, full group discussion, and a short-write) and then asked us to analyze it, with special heed to these questions:

• If you were a high school student, how do you think that this process would shape your                      academic literacy?
• What’s happening in there that might help the student to become more fluent with academic                        literacy?

Carmen said, and we all agreed, that the activity is “a great way to help students get comfortable with thinking critically,” and Caleb posited that this might be because poems in particular can “help kids on the lower end of the reading spectrum [with] reading slowly and intentionally and asking questions.” Because poems have no “answers,” they can also foster what Jen called a “permissive atmosphere” in which, as Britney put it, “the floor is open for your own interpretations[, making] students feel comfortable voicing their own opinions.”

Brain Drain and Rural Flight

            We next shifted gears to Koger’s short story and the problem of “brain drain.” Professor Weekley started us off with a short lecture on the concept, drawing heavily from the book Hollowing Out the Middle. In it, Patrick Carr describes a rural school system which focuses most efforts on the “best and brightest” students, who are often thus impelled to go to college and begin a career elsewhere. We’re particularly affected by this problem here in West Virginia: we are the only state in which less than 20% of the population has a Bachelors degree, and only 48% of West Virginians who do graduate with BA/BS degrees from West Virginia Colleges and Universities stay in the state (Christiadi, et al. 2014). Professor Weekley then drew our attention to the ways that the common presentation of “brain drain” is problematic, namely that it assumes that people who stay behind are not capable, and pays insufficient attention to structural problems making it difficult for individuals to remain in their communities. For example, out of the 50 jobs projected to grow the most in the next ten years in West Virginia, only 3 require baccalaureate degrees; many students who graduate from college are simply unable to find jobs relevant to their degrees close to home.

            Professor Weekley’s presentation provoked passionate discussion from our class; I think nearly all of us have first-hand experience with this issue. Our talk veered back and forth from the political, as we discussed causes of and possible solutions to this problem, to the pedagogical, as Professor Slocum suggested ways we might have similar discussions with our students. We were all excited at the prospect of making “brain drain” the topic of a longer term, multi-genre unit, which would be a perfect way to incorporate critical, place-based pedagogies and techniques in our classrooms. 

We could explore the issue through academic writing, such as Hollowing out the Middle, poetry and narrative pieces such as the ones we worked with earlier in the day, and through primary research within our own communities. Such a project would position our students not as mere receivers of information, but active and engaged citizens within their own communities, capable of tackling problems actively, effectively, and considerately.

Works Cited

Carr, P. J., & Kefalas, M. J. (2009). Hollowing out the middle: The rural brain drain and what it       means for America. Boston, MA: Beacon Press Books.

Christiadi, Deskins, J., &. Lego, B. (2014). Population Trends in West Virginia through 2030.            Morgantown, WV: WVU Research Corporation.

Bridging the Gap

by Caleb Alvarez

Now that we’ve agreed on the merits of critical literacy and place-based education in Appalachia, how do we make it happen in the classroom? This weeks’ class marked a shift from theoretical discussion about Appalachian identity and place-based education to strategic discussion about specific academic strategies to bridge the critical literacy and academic literacy gap. To start, we explored classroom possibilities for both a mostly neutral, historical research article, Ronald Lewis’s “Beyond Isolation and Homogeneity: Diversity and the History of Appalachia,” and emotionally-charged, polarized articles, Amy Clark’s “Appalachian Hope and Heartbreak” and Kevin Williamson’s “The White Ghetto.”

Lewis’s Gallery Walk

            To begin our discussion, we did a small-group activity that Audra S. actually used with Lewis’s article in her 12^th grade English class. Each group first found the thesis, main points, and supporting evidence in the article and wrote them on color-coded post-it notes. Then, on a large sheet of paper, each group visually represented the paper’s organization of these components. When the groups were finished, we had a gallery walk around the room to view the groups’ finished products and compared them to their own.

            We shared our comparisons as a whole group. The first thing that we noticed was that, despite having common ideas, each group had identified a different sentence as the thesis of the paper. This gave us the opportunity to discuss the commonalities between our groups’ understanding of the main ideas of the paper: all of groups agreed that Lewis was trying to emphasize that the history of Appalachia is different than the popular idea of that history, and each group had tried to find a quote that emphasized that both the isolation and the homogeneity in Appalachian history are a myth. We also noted that Sam and Carmen’s group had drawn the organization of the paper differently to emphasize the causal markers in the organization. Explaining their decision to visually represent Lewis’s argument in a different way helped emphasize the importance of thinking about writing as a constructed argument that is organized to meet the writer’s goals.

            Visually emphasizing this article’s organization would also be beneficial to high school students when studying this (or similar) historical non-fiction. The structure of the activity appeals to different kinds of learners: it gives a guided purpose for reading, requires that students deconstruct the article in order to synthesize it, offers the opportunity for discussion in both small and whole groups, and provides a visual representation to make the complex ideas tangible.

 After discussing the benefits of the activity we had done, we brainstormed other strategies we would use to prepare students to summarize and evaluate Lewis’s article.

·          Read and analyze the fictional “local color” texts that Lewis had suggested were responsible for the creation of the isolation and homogeneity myths.

·         Research the author’s background and discussing his potential biases.

·         Write personal responses to establish a basis for student opinions, and provide students with sentence starters to help organize their thoughts.

·         Reform students’ outlines into narratives to help them condense the work into a summary.

·         Look at the text paragraph by paragraph, identifying the main point of that paragraph and what that main point contributes to the thesis, and highlight supporting evidence with color-coding for the main point it supports.

Many of these suggestions could occur at any point in this instructional unit. Depending on the reading development of your students, you may need to frontload instruction to help prepare them to navigate the layers of this difficult text.

Pairing Polarizing Pieces

The other two texts both assume Appalachian exceptionalism (see “Questioning the Illusive Appalachian Identity”) to make their claims. Clark’s article was a heart-wrenching account of the loss of Appalachian community culture due to the demise of local businesses, while Williamson’s article was an inflammatory description of the lives of people in the Appalachian “big white ghetto.”  Though they would not be difficult for students to comprehend, they present a challenge for students to move from having an emotional response to producing academic writing. The challenge of moving from an emotional to an academic response was one we had to overcome ourselves in order to discuss the possibilities for using the articles in the classroom.

Williamson’s article was met with unanimous scorn, yet we sought to discover what larger ideological goals Williamson had. Jen was enflamed by his “irresponsible use of a national platform” to “make loose associations by hyperbolically capitalizing on myths and stereotypes of underrepresented minorities, and not just Appalachians.” Yet, Sam suggested that his use of these stereotypes was merely “sensationalized writing with the purpose to entertain, because he was never interested in reporting actual findings.” Regardless of his intent, it was clear that he was capitalizing on the idea of Appalachian exceptionalism.

However, we could not deny that Clark also relied on this exceptionalism, even if we liked her perspective better. Brandi reminded us that “by looking at either side exclusively, you miss the whole picture,” and asked us to consider how we could use these polarizing texts in our own classrooms. Caroline suggested that these texts could easily be used to talk about arguments, appeals, and agendas. Additionally, they could be used to study connotation, because a “similar piece with a similar agenda [to Williamson] wouldn’t be so inflammatory.” Additionally, I mentioned in my quickwrite that articles such as these could provide a background for students to investigate the economy in their own town, and use their personal perspective to write a review like Williamson’s or Clark’s.

Ironically, we never really addressed how we would make the transition from an emotional to an academic response, because we were stuck on our own emotional responses for so long that we ran out of time. Does this suggest that it is necessary to have an objective discussion about how to make the mental transition from emotional to academic before reading a text like Williamson’s? Or, is it necessary to experience these strong emotional responses before seeking to make them academic? In many ways, these emotional responses are just as difficult for students to navigate as a dense historical text like Lewis’s. Yet, understanding how to do both is essential for students’ academic and critical literacy.