Are YOU thinking? Are THEY Thinking? Some Thoughts on Ruby Payne and Critical Thinking

Currently, I am sitting in a "Bridges Out Poverty" workshop designed for ‘frontline workers’ who interact with individuals in poverty..  At $125 a head, the company putting this on just made nearly $8000 for five hours of training.  This is a for-profit company that makes billions of dollars on the sales of their books, workshops and curriculum, written for educators, family and youth workers, and health care workers.

I don't really buy into any packaged deal that promises to teach me how to be a better educator, so I walk into these sessions with a degree of skepticism.  I've had conversations with other educators regarding this poverty narrative and the racist, classist way it presents the lives of those in poverty, but wanted to give this work a chance, so I signed up for the workshop.  

There are many things that resonate with me because I work with children in poverty.  I will not disagree with some of the qualities and characteristics explained, but the problem I am finding is in the packaged message about who impoverished people are, what they do and do not know and how we, educators, DHS workers, CPS Workers, probation officers, etc. should teach them about the middle class world and how to function within it. Here's where my red flag goes up.  Why is it that everyone needs to conform to the 'middle class model' and be taught to do so?  Why should we look at what 'others' bring with them as deficit? Why should we assume that their human and social capital is some how less advantageous that what 'we,' the middle class have?

Now that this is on my radar, I've begun some research on the critique of this kind of work.  Not surprisingly, there is a healthy amount of it out there. It is quite educational to engage in an opposing viewpoint from those who are in the majority (those in power). So, I am looking around this room, full of 55 people who work with children and families, and wondering who is buying in to the propaganda being sold. I am wondering if they are thinking critically about this information and whether or not it is biased and possibly damaging to those we work with.  

This all leads me to a bigger question: are any of us really thinking about what is currently being sold to us as best for kids and families?  Are we helping those we work with to think critically about the information that is placed in front of them? How can we, as people who claim to do what is 'best for kids,' continue to tow the line of a poverty pedagogy workshop such as the one I attended, companies like Pearson and McGraw Hill who make billions of dollars on testing our kids, and politicians like Arne Duncan and his Common Core manifesto. Personally, I think all of us need to start thinking a little bit harder about what we want our legacy to be and what kinds of individuals we want to send out into the world.