"Culture of Poverty" Times Article

In continuing with my earlier post’s theme of contextualizing the school system within a larger system of poverty, a recent New York Times article revisited an academic concept termed the “culture of poverty” that defines institutional limits of habits, beliefs, and opportunities for populations living under the poverty line. While initially attacked when the sociology was first introduced in the sixties, the article goes on to highlight the reemergence of an academic credence for the cultural analysis of populations stagnated by the forces of poverty. This is an interesting idea and, I believe, very applicable to our students and their demographic conditions.

The article mentions the original controversial research that sought to explore how ideas and behavioral trends among groups of people could ensnare urban black families through self-perpetuating moral deficiencies. Clearly, the moral character of an entire race is not a viable subject of debate (as it was in the original research), and the contemporary approach to the research of cultural systems within poverty is more accurate in the study of institutional racism and isolation. With an approach to culture as “shared understandings” among a population, there are interesting studies mentioned in the article that have to do with a neighborhood’s shared perceptions of community action and thought; a “broken window” syndrome that has to do with larger forces perpetuating habits, thoughts, and beliefs that isolate populations in a cycle of poverty. It is important to keep in mind that this is different from the previous (discredited) research that primarily attributed racial characteristics to a lack of self-improvement and mobility within impoverished communities.

With my students as my reference into the Baltimore school district and urban education in general – read: a limited perspective – I recognize demeaning cultural habits and beliefs that are not racial in origin, but representative of poverty and class. The willingness to analyze cultural ideologies that reinforce and at times even celebrate an acceptance of impoverished conditions deserves support while considering the place and role of education within that system. Studies of a “culture of poverty” do not imply a lack of possibility through abstract forces that work in tandem against the individual or family. Rather, studies of a “culture of poverty” represent the analysis of class ideology as a means of exploring increasing rates of poverty and the experiences of living, working, and learning in the studied environment. This has huge implications for educational reform when considering the environment and culture of our students in Baltimore City, and how best to serve their needs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/us/18poverty.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage