Teachers, Ruby Payne, and Moving the Conversation Forward
January 5, 2009
I wrote last week about Scott McLeod’s post on Dangerously Irrelevant about the large number of districts hiring Ruby Payne to speak to issues of childhood poverty in spite of how little evidence there is for most of her claims.
There was a lively discussion in the comments on Scott’s post, and Alice Mercer, one of the women chiming in there, has continued the conversation on the In Practice blog with the first of what she promises will be a series of posts on “Why not ‘cure’ poverty instead”.
The conversation threatens to degenerate into camps of “theorists/ practitioners”, as if those lines are completely clean.
But perhaps, in these ongoing discussions, there’s the chance to move beyond the unfortunate assumption in too much of this discussion that people who critique Payne for ignoring the deeper structural causes of poverty somehow expect teachers to solve problems of poverty themselves or to simply suspend further work in classrooms until all children come to school well fed, toting their photos from Disney World, and dreaming of Harvard.
So, perhaps some of the teachers, scholars, parents, staff people, and the idly curious who read Education and Class could head over there to join the conversation.
November 24, 2011 at 10:26 am
Many criticize Payne’s anecdotal research, but much of what she offers has merit if we can get beyond her methodology. There is not one solution to the issues lower socioeconomic status students face. There is a benefit to students who learn to use formal register. It’s one way of breaking through social barriers. Payne makes a good point, and while it is not completely based in academic study, it is valid and useful. It doesn’t mean we should ignore larger issues faced by those in poverty. Payne also encourages mentoring. What could be better than capitalizing on the time and influence teachers have with their students? Hopefully time spent speaking in schools will focus on developing meaningful relationships with students.
November 28, 2011 at 6:43 am
Hello Shana. The problem is that in education and social sciences, we cannot trust the conclusions if we don’t trust the methodologies. We would not trust a doctor who, after having dinner a few times with in-laws who weren’t feeling well, then wrote a text about the specific reasons and remedies for complex illnesses. The methodology of just watching for short time just isn’t enough, but that’s exactly what Payne did — she just watched her in-laws.
Sure, all children learn in school to speak more formally than they do at home. All children learn that. Many southern young people learn to drop some of their accents as they enter the workworld in other places, and kids from Boston learn to drop some words from their vocabulary if they go to school or work in other places. Payne has no basis for concluding that what poor kids learn is any different. Payne did not invent the term “formal register” – a linguist doing extensive research did, and his study really has nothing to do the kinds of things Payne talks about. She just borrowed the term to sound scientific, and uses the term in very different ways than the person who first used it.
What you seem to be saying is that you conclude that she’s valid based on some personal judgment about her work, not any standards of research. If she’d written a novel without claiming to be doing scientific work, that would be fine. But she’s claiming to be basing her work on research to give it more credibility. That’s dishonest or worse.