Whose culture matters? Part II

Originally posted on September 27, 2011.

A few weeks ago, I discussed culture in classrooms. While some scholars argue for a core curriculum using a standardized canon, I suggested a focus on student literacy and critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. This week, I address a similar question:  Whose culture matters in neighborhoods?

I have pondered this question often since beginning my academic career. First, as neighborhood-based reforms such as Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) replicate across the country, their successes also raise some questions. In particular, consider HCZ’s Baby College. During this nine-week parenting seminar, parents learn how to read and discipline their children. Anyone versed in early childhood development literature will attest to the value of proper literacy and disciplinary practices. The question I often ask relates to the basic assumptions of the program. How does this program differ from the acculturation programs that occurred at the turn of the 20th century in New York? To be sure, there are differences. But, reformers cannot take for granted that, because they have some technical knowledge, it is the right knowledge.

Second, my dissertation relates to the diversity of cultural beliefs and practices in low-income neighborhoods. As such, I am always asking, “Whose culture matters, and how?” In particular, I investigate the role of culture to education outcomes in the short term and social mobility in the long term.

Renowned French theorist Pierre Bourdieu provides one answer: culture reproduces class positions. In other words, there is a dominant culture, and an individual’s knowledge and deployment of dominant culture will correlate to and maintain his class position. For instance, a teenager from a middle-class family will know to shake someone’s hand at an interview for an internship. Even more, he will know (or his parents will tell him) to apply for an internship rather than work at McDonalds.

Bourdieu’s argument is compelling and controversial. His goal as a theorist was to undress commonly accepted beliefs about society. In the United States, he shows that meritocracy is not the whole story. Although his writing is sometimes long-winded and sometimes confounding, the success of his theoretical argument—which is supported by his popularity—is that, after hearing only a brief description of social and cultural capital, most people will nod their head and murmur something like, “Ok. I get it. That’s interesting.” Not all scholars, however, agree with Bourdieu. If a dominant culture exists, they argue, so too does a non-dominant culture. If you recall my last blog, the argument is similar. Shakespeare is great, but so is Anansi. Why don’t we respect both?

Community cultural wealth is one response to Bourdieu’s singular focus on dominant culture. Each low-income neighborhood, the argument goes, has a unique set of non-dominant cultural practices. In relation to schools, educators ought to build on the capabilities of the students. The concept is particularly useful for developing policies and curriculum for school districts. It is also a response to the deficit-model of schooling. Instead of looking at what students’ lack, let’s look at what they have.

Both perspectives are helpful for understanding culture in neighborhoods; however, I suggest a hybrid solution. Like last week, literacy and critical thinking, reading, and writing are crucial. E.D. Hirsch’s most popular book is entitled, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. In the spirit of Bourdieu, it should probably read, “What Every American Needs to Know to Know to Be Socially Mobile.” Admitting the flaws of dominant culture makes it no less important to success. While not fair, students from non-dominant cultural backgrounds need to be conversant in a number of cultural styles to be successful. As a result, the most successful students are, what Prudence Carter terms, culturally flexible.

We will not solve the culture riddle anytime soon, if ever. The question, “Whose culture matters,” depends on who is asking and who is replying. However, educators can provide students with the literacy skills to read and write in a number of cultural registers.

Whose culture matters? Part I

Originally posted on September 06, 2011

Whose culture matters in classrooms? Since I began teaching English at a school with a diverse population of students, I have thought about this question often. While reading difficult, centuries-old English literature, students frequently asked, “Do we have to read this?” Or, “Why are we reading this?” To the first question, I invariably responded, “Yes!” To the second question, I usually paused and thought. Why do students have to read Canterbury Tales? If you are E. D. Hirsch, the answer is because the bawdy tales are part of a canon that “every American needs to know.”

It doesn’t take long to realize Hirsch is wrong on two levels. First, to say there is a stock of cultural knowledge that all should know, sounds like a worthy claim. The problem occurs when one group tries to define that core. Classical texts do not occur a priori. Their creation and the possibility of their creation is sociohistorically determined. So too are the criteria used to judge them. I have an irrational love for Shakespeare’s writing; however, who’s to say there was not a woman with equal talent during Elizabeth’s reign (for a richer discussion, read Virginia Woolf’s thought-provoking essay, “Shakespeare’s Sister”). Even more, we know there were rich oral traditions occurring on continents across the globe during the 16th century. I’m not arguing that Romeo and Juliet isn’t beautiful. Mercutio’s monologues are nonpareil. I’m arguing that beauty is subjective. By legitimizing one work of art, we de-legitimize another. Beowulf is great, but so are Anansi and Ramayana.

Second, and possibly more to the point, the core knowledge argument is misplaced, especially in the 21st century. Students don’t need to have read a list of books. They need to be literate and critical. Literacy includes print and non-print sources. Being critical includes thinking, reading, and writing skills. In essence, the text—whether it’s Shakespeare or Bashō or a YouTube video—is just a venue for literacy practice. By emphasizing student literacy, we empower them to become better consumers, critics, and producers.

Next week, I will continue this blog, asking “Whose culture matters in neighborhoods?”

Horatio Alger lives! Blame and the culture of poverty

This post was originally published on January 21, 2011.

Horatio Alger, a 19th century author, wrote novels about poor, downtrodden boys who go from rags to riches. They succeed due to dogged toil. The story is ingrained in the fabric of mainstream America. Fathers tell their sons, “If you work hard, you can make it.” That’s the American dream.

The rags to riches story works in concert with the culture of poverty argument. It goes something like this: a group of people develop a set of beliefs, actions, and perhaps excuses that inhibit them from succeeding in life. Over 40 years ago, when Oscar Lewis introduced the concept and Patrick Moynihan’s report popularized it, some parts of academia reacted strongly. William Ryan, in his book Blaming the Victim, retells a comedic sketch where Zero Mostel acting as a senator from the South wonders about the origins of World War II. At the end of the skit, the senator booms out, “And what was Pearl Harbor doing in the Pacific?” Ryan uses this to illustrate his point: the culture of poverty blames individuals for being the victims of unfair and deleterious structural conditions.

The culture of poverty often evokes two responses. First, some believe the culture of poverty is absolutely wrong and become indignant. Second, others believe the culture of poverty is absolutely right and become indignant. I worry that both sides, being so emotionally charged, are hindering us from having meaningful conversations about how to improve the conditions of economically impoverished people. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your opinion, there is no right answer.

The culture of poverty is a flawed concept, not because it doesn’t exist but because it is too simple. As Sharon Hays, a sociologist at USC, points out in her book Flat Broke with Children, to assume that there is a culture of poverty is neither wrong nor the whole story. Why is it outrageous to think that a young African American male or Latino has developed a series of behaviors to cope with his bleak surroundings? The school experiences and reactions of Primo and Caesar in Philippe Bourgois’ In Search of Respect provide an excellent example of this. What is wrong is to assume that there is only one culture of poverty and that it applies to all. Culture is not abstract. It is everywhere but also mutable and embedded in context.

At the same time, there is a common refrain among academics: culture and poverty are back and open to research (see the May 2010 issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science). While that is true, scholars also know that the culture of poverty has remained a popular shibboleth among mainstream America. Moving forward, academics must not only create a more appropriate vocabulary to explore and describe multiple cultures of poverty but also to communicate the import of understanding the myriad cultural and structural conditions that lead to the generational reproduction of poverty.

Dr. King, Civil Rights, and Education

This blog was originally published on January 18, 2011.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said that education is the civil rights issue of our time. While provocative and well-intentioned, the Secretary’s sentiment isn’t entirely true. That is not to say I disagree–education is part of the issue–but to target education as the last stand for civil rights is short-sighted. Poor education outcomes are a symptom of insidious, far-reaching, and unequal conditions and government policies.

We now live during a time when the distribution of wealth is astoundingly unequal. Not only do the top one percent control the majority of wealth in the United States, but the top decile of the top one percent, according to scholar David Harvey, are accumulating capital at unprecedented rates. Relatedly, spatial segregation occurs in cities across the United States, a result of changing labor markets as well as government sanctioned initiatives and policies such as freeways and redlining that have caused unfair conditions for specific groups based on race, class, and gender. Couple grotesque class inequality with segregation and government retrenchment regarding key civil rights issues such as education, housing, healthcare, and job opportunities and a more complex picture of the conditions causing poor education outcomes arises.

Since Dr. King’s famous speech, we have progressed. We have laws that ban segregation and discrimination. More people believe in equality and justice for all, so much so that an African American won the popular vote in a presidential election. And yet, as Dr. King noted, progress is not linear: “All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.” Just this year, anti-gay bullying led to the suicides of multiple teens; Arizona enacted stringent immigration laws that have endangered the basic human rights of both documented and undocumented immigrants; a proposed inter-faith mosque and community center to be built in Manhattan caused a groundswell of opposition and anti-Muslim animosity; and, despite comprising a minority of the population, African Americans and Hispanics occupied the majority of prison cells across the country. Indeed, our generation faces new challenges to overcome in order to achieve civil rights and social justice for all. Racism, classism, and sexism have transformed, becoming sometimes overt, sometimes covert, but just as pernicious.

Let’s celebrate the accomplishments of Dr. King and fellow civil rights activists, but also acknowledge that the dream is unfulfilled and we have work to do.

The social construction of change: Why deliberation matters

I originally published this blog on July 17, 2010.

Collaboration and stakeholder involvement are catchphrases frequently bandied about during policy design. The words connote democracy and shared decision-making. True deliberation, unfortunately, rarely occurs. Instead, we are entrenched in an age of symbolic rhetoric, not authentic participation, when talk about participation far exceeds actual involvement.

Never more has the inclusion of varied participants been more important: Communities are increasingly diverse, but also segregated. Educational outcomes are abhorrent for students belonging to non-dominant groups.  And amidst a 100-year blitzkrieg of ineffectual education trends and reforms, the likelihood for educational change is dubious. True deliberation, however, provides the opportunity for innovative and meaningful reform, reform that influences numerous target populations.

The core of public policy design is problem identification, which introduces several issues. First, how do we identify problems? And second, once identified, how do we obtain and allocate limited resources in order to mollify the problem?

The identification of social problems is complex and political. Problems do not exist a priori; they are not independent of individuals. In general, three factors impact problem identification: Indicators, focusing events, and feedback (Kingdon, 2003). First, indicators are most often concrete evidence of a problem; consider, for instance, graduation rates, unemployment rates, or the percent of working poor in a city. All are indicators of some social problem. Second, focusing events can occur in numerous forms and at unexpected times. September 11th, for example, spurred a focus on terrorism. California’s Prop 8, which bans gay marriage, caused a widespread polemic about civil and constitutional rights. Third and last, feedback can occur in formal modes, such as program evaluations, or informal, such as citizen feedback. Of the three factors, feedback is the most useful for citizen involvement; it is also the least influential in the education policy process.

In a policy context, problem identification alone is insufficient. Action is necessary. The War on Poverty was a response to the nation’s high poverty rate. After 9/11, with a changed national tenor, the Bush administration created the Department for Homeland Security and enforced strict border control policies. In each case, politicians leveraged the national mood as well as their own political cache to instantiate change.

How do social construction and deliberation relate to policy design? Through a discursive process, social construction influences the ways in which individuals perceive and interpret social problems. Politics and power are critical factors to the identification of and reaction to social problems. However, power is not equally distributed and decisions do not always represent all. Up until now, policy design has mostly included dominant groups, which has resulted in mis-representative and poorly conceived policy.

Social construction occurs differently at various levels and is dependent on social hierarchies and positions. The way I understood welfare when I began teaching at a school in an impoverished community was not the same way many of my students’ parents understood welfare. Similarly, the way a policy-maker understands the needs of a community may differ from the way a community understands their needs. To assume one viewpoint is right and the other is wrong is mistaken. Like looking at a hologram from different perspectives, no two angles provide the same view; no one angle, however, is right. Similarly, no two individuals view problems or create solutions in exactly the same way. Through the inclusion of multiple parties involved in recursive dialogue, we may be able to approximate more accurately truth and, in doing so, socially construct change that benefits all.

Katy Perry, you’re awesome; Tom Jefferson, you need a makeover.

I originally posted this blog on September 21, 2010.

High school students know who Katy Perry is. She’s a socialite. She has a song, “I Kissed a Girl.” She dated the tattooed guy from Gym Class Heroes and now is engaged to  the funny guy from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Teenagers could, I’m sure, also fill-in-the-blanks for numerous other pop culture figures: T-Pain, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, etc., etc…

And yet, in spite of a mandatory civics class, most students don’t know who Thomas Jefferson is. Sure, some could tell me he was a president or signed the Declaration, but they don’t know about his political beliefs; they don’t know about inalienable rights. The same goes for most other political thinkers, like Thomas Hobbes or Aristotle or John Locke or John Rawls.

The fact that they are all white old guys who belong to a traditional Western canon is important, but isn’t my purpose for today. I am certainly not a Great Books fan, but I do see value in most of these authors’ texts. After all, many African American writers and activists learned about concepts such as inalienable rights and social justice from the classics. My purpose for today is what we ask teachers and students to do or not to do in schools.

The government will announce this morning the winners of the Promise Neighborhood planning grant competition. I have been clear from the start about my hopes and reservations for the initiative, which is modeled after Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), as well as community-based reform. Such a “holistic” policy perspective, using acclaimed sociologist William Julius Wilson’s words, importantly targets both structural and cultural factors.

And yet, reforms in education seldom last. It seems short-sighted that policy-makers frequently place so much stress on structural changes with little discussion of cultural factors. HCZ is largely successful because of the parent academy, which provides parenting skills and knowledge to the fathers and mothers of the students in the schools. Such reform, hopefully, creates sustainable change.

The next logical step is raising a generation of learners as well as politically engaged citizens. Some readers may argue that perhaps we should first focus on getting a student to read a book or pass a test. I agree, but also think raising good human beings isn’t a zero-sum game; we can encourage multiple purposes of education. Others may worry that I am advocating for jingoism or inculcation. That is absolutely not the case. I am arguing for students who will question, problemetize, and contest.

In some classroom in Los Angeles, a teacher is creating a dialogue with her students about Thomas Jefferson, civil rights, and social movements like the Justice for Janitors campaign or the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union. That teacher is empowering her students by asking them to envision a better society. Hopefully, the Promise Neighborhood winners will dare to create the necessary conditions for lasting change too.

The promise (and peril) of Promise Neighborhoods

I originally posted this blog on June 28, 2010.

Geoff Canada has quickly become a popular example of the charismatic, transformational leader necessary for positive educational change. His vision of the potential of one neighborhood is nonpareil and extraordinary. His non-profit organization, the Harlem’s Children Zone, which provides a comprehensive suite of services to children and families within a 100 city block radius in Harlem, is ending generational poverty. Over the past several years, Canada has been featured in multiple newspapers, in a book written by Paul Tough, on segments for 60 Minutes and CNN, and even in an American Express commercial.  In fact, Canada and HCZ have been so successful that President Obama, using non-profits and higher education institutions as local implementers, wants to replicate the model in communities across the United States.

The purpose of the U.S. Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhoods Program is to improve the outcomes of children through a continuum of “cradle-through-college-to-career” services. Of note, applications for the first stage, the planning grant, which provides a year of funding in order to develop an implementation plan, were due yesterday.

Promise Neighborhoods provides an opportunity to catalyze sustainable place-based reform; however, tremendous obstacles exist. Canada, for instance, estimates a program similar to HCZ will cost approximately $35 million. Even with matched funding from philanthropic organizations, organizations are not likely to achieve that amount. Other challenges include the politics of policy design, implementation, and evaluation, as well as the involvement of community stakeholders. Yet, the trend to fund community-specific  initiatives, while not new (see the Community Action Agencies established with the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 as part of President Johnson’s Great Society), is essential to improving the lives of historically marginalized populations. Even though limitations certainly exist, Promise Neighborhoods represents an acknowledgment of the multidimensional aspects of education and community building. It may also represent, I hope and believe, an important shift in policy design.

Remember the Coleman Report

I originally posted this blog on March 02, 2010.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated a study of educational opportunity among students. In 1966 James Coleman presented the Equality of Educational Opportunity Study. Known as the Coleman Report, the findings were and are striking. They led to a shift of focus from inputs to outputs, from money spent to scores attained.

I’ve heard some describe the findings of the report as more money does not equal higher achievement. That’s true, but incomplete. The findings illustrate that variables such as per pupil spending and teacher to student ratio have little effect in comparison to socio-economic status. 

Yesterday President Obama announced ‘turnaround’ grants for underperforming schools in order to improve the percentage of students who graduate. Schools in each qualified state will compete for funds based on proposals that demonstrate their willingness to change. Some options include removing the principal and a portion of the staff, restructuring governance, and changing instructional programs.

Within the past year, our administration has introduced two new competitive grant programs for considerable sums of money–$4.35 billion for Race to the Top and $900 million for the newest grant. Reform is important and necessary. A disproportionate number of African American and Hispanic students do not graduate, do not go to college, do not lead happy lives. Spending money to fund a new reading program, unfortunately, will not initiate systemic, sustainable change. Replacing leadership, teachers, or governance structures probably won’t help much either. We may see bumps in achievement, but they will fade.

Public education is not doomed. For widespread, lasting change, however, our administration must consider a broader array of social reform programs. Money is important, but we need to fund the right things. The Coleman Report reminds us of the influence of a spectrum of factors including access to healthcare, stable housing, and early and adult education. The Great Society, which led to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is the source of both praise and criticism. The intent was good and ambitious. The results were uneven and sometimes uninspiring. Perhaps it’s time we begin to speak of a new generation of progressive initiatives, a chorus of reforms to improve schools and communities together.

The CliffsNotes of Teaching: Movies about education

I originally posted this blog on May 14, 2009.

Laurent Cantet’s The Class, Entre les Murs in French, accentuates experiences typically ignored in most classroom-based films and elicits new feelings from the audience. Based on François Bégaudeau’s semi-autobiographical book about the life of a teacher in an inner-city school in Paris, we follow the evolution (or de-evolution) of Monsieur Marin, played by Bégaudeau, and his students throughout a school-year.

Cantet shot the movie like a documentary. The scenes were not scripted; instead, they were modeled on the book, improvised and rehearsed by actors, all nonprofessionals. Marin, while possibly well-intentioned, is far from likable. The class is populated with racially diverse students, who become more flawed, authentic as the story progresses. Like a real classroom, certain students move to the forefront as others drift to the background; politics and power struggles loom over the actions of the teacher and students.

Entre les Murs does not kowtow to the typical fanciful dynamics among a teacher and his students portrayed in Hollywood. It does not hold you tight and reassure you that all is well. It does question the roles of stakeholders and purposes and effectiveness of education. The movie reveals startling and upsetting glimpses into a classroom and adds a human dynamic to a genre that is sorely lacking.

(Re)viewing the Classics: Carol Stack’s All Our Kin

I originally published this post on February 01, 2011, at www.21stcenturyscholar.org. At the time, I was just beginning to study neighborhood ethnography--the methodology that I would later adopt for my dissertation.

Carol Stack, with her three-year-old son in tow, spent several years collecting data in The Flats, a poor, black neighborhood in an unidentified Midwestern city. Her purpose was to examine the strategies poor people adopt in order to survive. The researcher, now a faculty member at University of California, Berkeley, did not seek access through a church or school; wanting a more representative sample of families, she gained access to two families through a mutual acquaintance. From there, she networked.

All Our Kin challenges the stereotype of black families as dysfunctional and self-destructive. Stack presents a complex network of real and fictive kin working together with few resources to survive. Among these networks exist complex rules about topics such as gifting and child-rearing. Some may see these families as similar to the families presented in texts like the Moynihan Report or The Truly Disadvantaged, but Stack provides the reader with a more personal, nuanced portrait. A single-parent household does not automatically equal social disorganization.

The book is as relevant now as it was when published in 1970. The writing is clear and concise. Stack’s use of theory is unobtrusive but useful. More importantly, buzzing in the background of the text is a persistent feeling of uncertainty and precariousness. The individuals in All Our Kin want to succeed, but they can’t. Their material conditions are lacking and government policies and programs do not support upward mobility. Critiquing the welfare state, she says:

It is clear that mere reform of existing programs can never be expected to eliminate an impoverished class in America. The effect of such programs is that they maintain the existence of such a class. Welfare programs merely act as flexible mechanisms to alleviate the more obvious symptoms of poverty while inching forward just enough to purchase acquiescence and silence on the part of the members of this class and their liberal supporters. As we have seen, these programs are not merely passive victims of underfunding and conservative obstructionism. In fact they are active purveyors of the status quo, staunch defenders of the economic imperative that demands maintenance of a sizable but docile impoverished class. (p. 127-8)

As I said before, the book is as relevant now (if not more) than ever.

So you want to be a qualitative researcher in the 21st century

Originally posted at www.21stcenturyscholar.org

A tension exists between old and new. In The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom explains the generational process among writers: Old poets inspire young poets. The apprentice learns to love form by reading the work of a skilled master. The beginner writes derivative verse. Anxiety stirs as she realizes the only way to establish a legacy is to break from tradition. And, that’s the rub.

The charm of Bloom’s theory is that it extends to numerous fields. Consider the myriad movies in which young protagonists ignore the sage advice of their battled-scarred mentors. Characters fail, fail, and fail again. And then, after sweaty and bruised adversity, they triumph. Hello, Karate Kid. Or, think about athletes. Young basketball phenoms like LeBron battle the legacies of legends like Jordan and Magic. Musicians provide yet another example—thankfully, Bird inspired Coltrane. The theory extends to more quotidian examples too. Children clash with parents. Students argue with teachers. The young fight for a trophy, the ability to say, “I did things my own way, a better way.” The trophy, of course, proves elusive.

As qualitative research enters an exciting moment, apprentice and master researchers are reenacting similar clashes in classrooms and research labs across the globe. “The methods are quaint,” the initiate says, “but I think they’re a little dusty. I can do better.” The mentor winces: How many times has she heard similar boasts?

Innovative technologies and digital media are providing new tools and venues. Consider the possibilities of research-based digital media. They can reveal complex processes that contribute to elusive opportunities for low-income students in ways that peer-reviewed articles cannot. Policymakers often grimace at pedantic and esoteric research. A digital short provides fertile ground for conveying the sorts of thick description qualitative researchers seek and also improving the relevance of research for policy stakeholders.

Novel methods are alluring, an opportunity for novice researchers to shape their legacies. But, like the young poet who privately spends thousands of hours mastering rhyme and rhythm or the basketball phenom who quietly practices drills in the gym, the innovative researcher is the product of hours and hours of unheralded work: planning, collecting, analyzing, producing, experimenting, revising, and repeating.

Rigorous designs depend on the ability of a scholar to undergird the process and product with traditional methods, all the while embracing emerging opportunities. A two-minute film excites. It also requires a complex set of skills. The researcher has to be well versed in fundamentals like interviewing and analyzing as well unconventional techniques like filming and editing. She has to understand triangulation and color theory, parallelism and the rule of thirds, NVivo and Final Cut. The challenge is formidable. But, the chance to experience that inventive moment, the next adjacent possibility, is worth the work.