A Culture of Poverty? The Debate generated by the extraordinary reach of Ruby Payne

The original intent of this article was to gather together the debate and provide what might best be described as a select annotated bibliography on the topic of Ruby Payne and her amazing reach across schools across the US but also apparently in Australia.  However just as I was consolidating all the articles I stumbled across a blog by Larry Ferlazzo posted on 6 February 2012 that obviously had the same idea.  So I have started with his website but kept the extracts from some of the articles I have sourced that were not picked up by Ferlazzo.

Background

Ruby Payne's book called Frameworks for Understanding Poverty was published in 2001 but it seems that over the last five or so years she has become a school professional development phenomena.  Her work has generated a heated debate in the US. 

Payne's key message is that poverty is not simply a monetary condition, it is a culture with particular rules, values, and knowledge transmitted from one generation to the next that inform people how to live their lives successfully - how to build and keep relationships, how to get one's needs met, how to entertain and be entertained, and more. Payne asserts that children growing up in a culture of poverty do not succeed because they have been taught the "hidden rules of poverty," but not the hidden rules of being middle class.

On the other hand teachers who are predominately from the middle class do not understand or relate to their students from poverty because they don't appreciate the hidden and essential rules for survival in poverty. Her workshops and books are directed to making explicit the hidden rules of class at all levels, and encouraging teachers to teach children of poverty the rules of middle class.

Responses

Monique Redeaux, The Culture of Poverty Reloaded, Monthly Review Vol 63, issue 3, 2011

Education consultant Ruby Payne has amassed a multimillion-dollar empire by pimping poverty for profit says Redeaux.

This article shows how the way in which the Payne message, which identifies and contextualizes perceived class based differences in ways of knowing is subtly but crucially different from educators who present a culturally empowering message.

Payne's work is based on a racialized "culture of poverty" model that attributes the failure of the poor to their lack of middle-class behavior and values....Payne's work appeals to common sense assumptions of the poor as promiscuous, young, welfare queens and gangbanging, gun-toting drug dealers.

.... Payne reifies and promotes stereotypical perceptions of race and illustrates how class is racialized. She locates the cause of poverty in the most convenient place: among poor people of color and their pathological "culture."

The basic premise surrounding the culture of poverty paradigm is the belief that they are different from us.  

Redeaux contrasts this with the work of Lisa Delpit, a black educator that on the surface may look similar.

Delpit argued that direct, skills-based instruction was not only effective but also necessary in educating poor black students. Delpit based her arguments on her own experiences as a black student taught to write prolifically by a teacher-of-color, using so-called traditional methods, as well as what she heard and learned from other black educators. She and many other black teachers asserted that black students already wrote fluently and creatively; they only needed to know, understand, and be explicitly taught the codes or rules for participating in the "culture of power":

...Both terms, the "culture of poverty" (Payne) and the "culture of power" (Delpit) locate the problem in culture-but in different ways/places. Although Payne and other "culture of poverty" advocates see the problem as residing with the cultural attributes of those living in poverty, the "culture of power" perspective suggests that the middle/upper class hold the power and key to institutional success, partly through their monopolization of educational skills, and that they do all they can to make sure that they and their offspring maintain that power.

When Delpit began her work on "other people's children" she predicted that her purpose would be misunderstood. People criticized her for "vindicating" teachers who subjected students of color to isolated, meaningless, sub-skills day after day. However, what she was actually advocating when she referred to "skills-based instruction" was the "useful and usable knowledge that contributes to a student's ability to communicate effectively in standard, generally acceptable literary forms" and she proposed that this was best learned in meaningful contexts....  In other words, Delpit argued that both technical skills and critical thinking are essential: a person of color who has no critical thinking skills becomes the "trainable, low-level functionary of the dominant society, simply the grease that keeps the institutions which orchestrate his or her oppression running smoothly." At the same time, those who lack the technical skills demanded by colleges, universities, and employers will be denied entry into these institutions. Consequently, they will attain financial and social success only within the "disenfranchised underworld."

The key distinction between Delpit and Payne is the reason why they believe students should be taught the "hidden rules." Payne argues that their educational and economic success depend on their being able to conform to the rules of the middle/upper class. While Delpit, too, makes this argument, she does not believe that students should passively adopt an alternate code simply because it is the "way things are," especially if they want to achieve a particular economic status. Instead, Delpit asserts that students need to know and understand the power realities of this country with the purpose of changing these realities.

Delpit herself is an activist for change: "I am involved in political work inside and outside of the educational system, and that political work demands that I place myself to influence as many gate-keeping points as possible. And it is there that I agitate for change, pushing gatekeepers to open their doors to a variety of styles and codes." Thus Delpit advocates a know-thy-enemy, top-down, oppositional approach to change. She asserts that we must first infiltrate oppressive institutions-which can only be done if we are equipped with the skills needed to gain entry (i.e., passing standardized tests, speaking the language of power in interviews, etc.)-and then use our position in a way to deconstruct and dismantle these oppressive systems. This is radically different from Payne's acquiescent "this-is-the-way-things-are-so-learn-to-live-with-it" mentality. While teaching students and teachers how the world currently operates, Payne implicitly accepts these realities as unalterable, or even desirable. Indeed, Payne advocates for policies that have proven to be especially detrimental to students of color and thus keep the "culture of power" in power.

By concentrating on the deficiencies of particular cultures, Payne and "culture of poverty" ideology not only demonize people of color, but also fail to indict the corrupt system responsible for making and keeping people poor. ..

Redeaux contrasts this with Payne whose books and workshops are marketed directly to predominantly white administrators and educators, telling them what they want to hear-that there is an easy way out: the cultural whitening of children of color. And one can purchase this knowledge by buying Ruby Payne's books. It is as simple as that. ....  She is making a fortune advising those with power how to manipulate and control the children of the poor, while, of course, claiming to want to help them. By situating the problem and solution for poverty at the feet of those oppressed by it, she leaves current power structures intact-the same power structures that have caused and maintained poverty in the first place.

Source: http://monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/the-culture-of-poverty-reloaded

Mistlina Sato and Timothy J. Lensmire, Phi Delta Kappa, Poverty and Payne, January 2009

This article aims to support teachers in ways of thinking about cultural differences and working effectively with children of poverty:

In concludes by stating that, "While we know teachers crave new ideas for teaching and want access to "ideas that work," we also know teaching is a complex and uncertain endeavor. To imagine that we can create a list of strategies and assign them to whole groups of children because of who their parents are or where they live is a gross over- simplification of what it means to teach or to be a teacher. As teachers begin to embrace issues of social class differences among their students and themselves, pedagogical shifts will need to be more than the addition of a few technical strategies.

Teachers will need support in developing a better understanding of themselves and their own world- views in order to better engage with children who bring different experiences, cultures, values, and ways of understanding the world into the classroom. New ways of being in the classroom must be taken up by teachers. Part of that being is to be present in the moment with students, while listening to them and respecting their ideas. Part of that being is a willingness to ask students questions, to get to know them as thinkers, as children, and as people. And part of that being is patience and grace in response to uncertainty, in response to the everyday classroom's pervasive demands for wise decisions and action.

Source: http://www.pdkmembers.org/members_online/publications/Archive/pdf/k0901sat.pdf

Paul Gorski and Roberta Ahlquist, "Assault on Kids: How Hyper-accountability, corporatization, deficit ideology, and Ruby Paynes are destroying our schools.

The introduction to the book explains that, ..[t]he initial subject of our indignation was the growing influence on the U.S. education milieu of Ruby Payne, as the baroness of teacher professional development. Her for-profit company, aha! Process, Inc., makes millions of dollars annually, and her book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, is, perhaps, the single piece of literature most widely read by today's classroom teachers.

..... Her deficit ideology ... locates societal problems as existing within rather than as pressing upon disenfranchised communities. Unfortunately, deficit ideology remains a fairly easy sell, supported, as it is, by notions of white supremacy and male privilege, English language superiority, hetero-normativity, capitalist hegemony, anti- immigrant nationalism, and Christian dominance.

..... When we stepped back and considered her work in light of the growing neoliberal influence on U.S. schooling, as characterized by hyper-accountability, larger patterns of deficit ideology, and the privatization and corporatization of public schools...we came to see Payne, not as the underlying problem but as a symptom, an illustration, a personification of something significantly bigger. In other words, the question wasn't simply, How did Ruby Payne manage to assume such an inordinate amount of influence over how educators think about the education of poor and low-income students?

.....It was, as well, What are the sociopolitical conditions in which somebody with Payne's ideas could gain this influence, how else are these conditions manifesting in schools and the larger society, and to whose benefit?

...Yes, Payne is a deficit ideologue, but her popularity ...[and] her reach is also a product of hyper-accountability and the desperation it breeds for a quick fix-for practical and immediate, even if misguided and fallacious, strategies for closing "achievement gaps."

...... We need not only to ask, what is problematic about Payne? But also, What are the conditions in schools and the larger society that would facilitate the mass acceptance of such devastating ideas? How have we-teachers, school leaders, education and community activists-been conditioned to embrace oppressive ideas and practices, often in the name of "diversity," "multiculturalism," "equality," or "equity"?

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Assault-Kids-Hyper-Accountability-Corporatization-Counterpoints/dp/1433112280/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1304885130&sr=8-1 

Doug Noon, A Decent Education, Borderland, 27 December 2011

This writer was told to read Payne's book before the next school staff meeting.  According to Noon, Payne claims, without any real evidence, that the poor are trapped in a "culture of poverty" and need to be explicitly taught the "hidden rules" of being middle class. I don't especially look forward to reading this, but I want to be prepared for the meeting, which is part of our school improvement plan after too many of our low-income students did not meet the standardized testing targets last spring.   He calls the book ' Offensive stereotyping of people in Poverty.

Source: http://borderland.northernattitude.org/2011/12/27/a-decent-education/

Anita Bohn, assistant professor at Illinois State University on the blog-site Rethinking Schools writes that

For Ruby K. Payne, ..., poverty is big business. Since 1996, Payne and her assistants have been conducting 200 seminars a year training as many as 25,000 teachers and school administrators to work with children from poverty, making her the single biggest influence on teachers' understanding of children from poverty in the United States....

Initially, I had trouble finding out much about Payne's work, apart from these word-of-mouth testimonials. My university library, a good one with substantial holdings, had no books by Ruby Payne, nor did the consortium of university libraries to which it belonged. When I typed the name "Ruby Payne" into a Google search, though, I hit a jackpot of sorts: Google reported thousands of hits. School districts across the nation and even in Australia and New Zealand announced upcoming aha! Process workshops for teachers, or reported on workshops recently conducted in their districts.

How had someone so widely hailed in the public schools as an expert on poverty been ignored by national research institutes, higher education, and all the major, published authorities on the subject of poverty? It took several months of investigating print and media sources on Payne, interviewing participants and trainers of her workshops, and participating in two initial training sessions before I finally was able to shed some light on the phenomenon called Ruby Payne.

..... I am still hard pressed to understand why ideas like this have made Payne the hottest speaker/trainer on poverty on the public school circuit today. One thing is certain, though: Ruby Payne has flown under the radar far too long. It's time for teachers and administrators to take a critical look at her immensely popular message.

....Payne and the company she owns, aha! Process Inc., self-publish her books. That means her research does not have to be verifiable, reproducible, valid, or reliable in order to get published. Payne's promotional materials talk about her valuable "case studies," but you quickly learn from reading her books and attending her workshops that there is nothing more substantive than a few random anecdotes about children and families she claims to have encountered over the years. ....

Payne's books and lectures present a superficial and insulting picture of children and families in poverty. Poor people, according to Payne, are scofflaws perpetually looking for a fight or some other good time when they are not busy milking the system. ....

Payne directly targets one of the largest, hungriest markets for quick fixes in public education: the ubiquitous and mandated in-services organized and offered in every school district in the nation. Payne charges real money for her services - $300 per individual registrant on her public tours, and upwards of $3000 for three-day contract workshops with school districts, plus the required textbook purchases. Her secrets to working with children of poverty are making her a very rich woman while the school districts that hire her are districts with high poverty rates and in need of workable solutions.

Downright Dangerous Message

One teacher told me after an aha!Process workshop that something she learned in Payne's seminar was "poor people can't think abstractly." Consider the curricular decisions that might be made by a teacher who takes away that understanding of her students from a Ruby Payne workshop.

Payne offers teachers and administrators something very seductive: simple and comfortable solutions to complex school problems. Payne's facile answers allow teachers and administrators to place the blame for low-income children's lack of academic success entirely outside the schools.

The real danger of Payne's ideology is that it effectively prevents social change. It makes us believe that we can reduce the problem of poverty without needing to make any changes in society or in our own lives. We just need to teach them a different set of rules to live by. .... If we believed that racism and oppression accounted for a good deal of poverty, there would be a greater emphasis on social rights and social responsibility, on economic opportunity programs, on progressive rather than regressive taxation, on the right to living wages with retirement benefits, and on access to good education and health care.

Are There Any Valuable Ideas?

Ruby Payne's popularity attests to the urgent need for answers to the questions and concerns of teachers and administrators who sincerely want to help children from lower socioeconomic status achieve educational equity. We know that the learning, academic achievement, and social development of students who are in poverty can be affected positively or negatively by the attitudes of teachers and administrators. Payne's intention of helping teachers and administrators become aware and appreciate the circumstances of people who seem unfamiliar to them is an honorable one; the problem is, as that intention is realized, it is riddled with factual inaccuracies and harmful stereotypes.

What Do We Need to Know?

Instead of allowing ourselves to be misled about a culture of poverty, we need to critically examine the culture of denial that has become institutionalized in our society and has caused the study of poverty in the last 20 years to be more concerned with promoting a theory of individual culpability than with addressing institutionalized inequities. We need to understand that the poor themselves are not the problem; the problem is the fact that the poor do not have realistic opportunities to escape from poverty.

The real answers aren't easy ones. They require us to work at all levels within the system and outside of it as advocates and change agents for children and families. We need to work collaboratively with organizations and political movements that fight for systemic improvement of the lives of children and families in poverty and strive to ensure people's basic human rights to adequate food, housing, medical care, decent education, and an equal opportunity to succeed.

...It takes hard work and unwavering dedication. It takes committed teachers and administrators willing to set high expectations and offer engaging curricula that make strong personal connections for their students. It takes schools where students are not just prepared to take and pass standardized tests, but where they are taught how to play a conscious, active role in society, how to recognize and combat racism and other institutionalized inequities, and how to work in pursuit of the dream of social and global justice.

Source: http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/21_02/fram212.shtml

I tried to find responses from her work in Australian schools.  I found a website that contained feedback from teachers who attended her professional learning program.  To a person they loved it.  Their responses are worth reading at http://forum.education.tas.gov.au/webforum/education/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=print_topic;f=81;t=000001

The only other Australian reference to her work, located, is cited below:

 Tony Kruger, Brenda Cherednichenko, Marcelle Cacciattolo and Merryn Davies, Taking a standpoint: teacher agency and education for the least advantaged, AARE 2007

In some schools the work of Ruby Payne and colleagues has been taken to present a helpful means of framing the effect of poverty/low income on student participation and learning.   Payne's work does fit the demands of effectiveness-driven educational priorities. 

The strength of her recommendations is that they provide teachers with locally specific techniques for working with students from low income families in ways consistent with effective curriculum, pedagogical and assessment practices.  Where Payne's work is deficient is that it locates the cause of the weak education achievement of students from low-income families in their inability to relate constructively to the demands of the school.  Payne's strategy is that teachers must sculpt students to fit the structural and procedural forms of schools.  It assumes that students won't be able to calculate the costs of acquiescence. ....

The reaction prompted by Payne's prescription is the re-visiting of a 'blame the victim' ethos of an earlier era of educational thinking.

.....  Ruby Payne's approach erases students' agency from the consideration of educational practices.  ...

Source: http://www.aare.edu.au/07pap/kru07214.pdf

To find out more about Ruby Payne's work go to: http://www.ahaprocess.com/