During the talk, Ferguson bought up some valid points about the potential of minority students and the expectations that educators espouse. He said if students and their families are motivated and equipped, then they will be successful.
Second, he explained the education gap and read the results from his statistical regression. Students were divided into two categories: advantaged and disadvantaged. Ferguson defined the advantaged students as living in two-parent homes with a computer and disadvantaged students as living in single-parent homes.
I found this methodology problematic so I asked if there was a reason that he did not consider income as an indicator for the disadvantaged group. “I can’t ask fifth graders their family income,” he said. As the group laughed, I rephrased my question. “True, but you could use other measures such as students’ participation in free or reduced lunch and property tax.”
His next statement raised a red flag: He claimed that it was not an issue of socioeconomic status. “This is about lifestyle.”
“Class is lifestyle,” I responded. “I don’t care,” he repeated at least three times. It’s about “lifestyle.”
First, “I don’t care” is not a strategically wise approach to closing the achievement gap. Second, familiarity with “lifestyle” involves understanding the why or what that motivates a family or group to make certain choices.
Dr. Ruby Payne’s “A Framework for Understanding Poverty” and Richard Rothstein’s “Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black Gap” offer detailed arguments for why lifestyle is class and why it matters. Unfortunately, neither time nor space permits detailed explanations of their arguments.
However, in “The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools,” Nicholas Lemann, makes point that supports my claim. Lemann argues that it is the students’ “parents’ impoverishment, poor education, lax discipline and scant interest in education” that impedes school success. In effect, parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds practice their respective roles differently.
Here is an example: You enter two grocery stores located in different neighborhoods and witness the same scenario. However, you observe two completely different outcomes. The scenario: A child reaches for something that catches her attention. Parent X, who lives at or below the poverty level, smacks the child’s hand and says, “Stop it!” or “Don’t touch that!” Parent Y, who lives in the more affluent part of town, asks the child, “What is that you have there?” or “Let’s see, what is this?” This is an example of corrective versus conversational use of language, or positive versus negative reinforcement. Lifestyle factors — class — determine how a parent chooses to respond. Research shows that corrective language use impedes a child’s learning.
The previous example and Ferguson’s talk open the discussion to Oscar Lewis’s self-perpetuating “culture of poverty,” which is widely misinterpreted as blaming the victim. The culture of poverty theory rightly acknowledges, as Payne and Rothstein would agree, that conflicts across class cause the widening of the achievement gap. In part, this is because we normalize middle-class culture. Since lifestyle is about choices learned from your socioeconomic status, then lifestyle is class.
Poverty and its effects are directly related to lifestyle. Whether it is the people from Appalachia, Michael P. Macdonald’s neighborhood in “All Souls: A Family from Southie” or natives of the Mississippi Delta, their socioeconomic status determines how they live. Lifestyle is class and one’s class reflects a specific lifestyle.
Rarely are problems and solutions black and white. More often there are shades of grey. We live in a diverse world with complex problems, which means our solutions require levels of sophistication.
We must understand the driving force behind a method. Only this will provide us with a comprehensive understanding. This understanding will then enable us to devise viable solutions. If we fail to understand why parents and families make the choices they do, then we will never be in a position to close the door of the achievement gap.
We must look not only at what is, but also understand how and why it is. And in this case, class matters.