Tuesday, June 20, 2017

You Do Not Think Alone, Gareth Cook

You Do Not Think Alone, Gareth Cook

Poverty really is the result of a state of mind — among rich people, Joan Maya Mazelis

Poverty really is the result of a state of mind — among rich people, Joan Maya Mazelis

  
Joan Maya Mazelis is an assistant professor of sociology and an affiliated scholar at the Center for Urban Research and Education at Rutgers University-Camden, and the author of "Surviving Poverty: Creating Sustainable Ties among the Poor."
Recently, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said that poverty is a state of mind, and having the right mind-set will let people escape poverty. He was both right and wrong. There is a poverty mind-set we should discuss, but it’s not the one Carson lamented. The problem is not that people living in poverty need to have a better attitude to escape poverty. It’s that all of us should have a better attitude when it comes to poor people.
Other researchers have detailed the compelling evidence that Carson conflates cause and effect; to the extent poor people feel hopeless and helpless, it’s the poverty they confront that causes these feelings, and not the other way around.
But Carson’s error runs deeper. Implicit in his understanding of poverty — which many share — is that people are poor because they aren’t working and they made bad choices and decisions that landed them in poverty and keep them there. It might surprise Carson to learn that many poor people agree with him.
 Play Video 1:22
Carson on the power of the human brain
In remarks to his new staff on Monday, March 6, Housing and Urban Development secretary Ben Carson diverts to talking about the capacity of the human brain and he insinuated that you can zap your brain into remembering everything. (Reuters)
Helen, a white woman in her 40s, is an example. When I interviewed her, she lived in a dilapidated house in Philadelphia, with no running water. She did maintenance work sporadically at one of the city’s stadiums; her husband’s work in construction was also inconsistent and low-paying. She was looking for a better job and wishing for longer hours and higher pay, but she nonetheless told me that poor people are lazy and don’t want to work.
I found in my research among Philadelphia’s poorest residents that many believed that other poor people were lazy — but knew they themselves were not. They believed that hard work would guarantee they would get ahead, even as most of them worked very hard but stayed poor. They blamed themselves for not having achieved more in life. Given that most poor people who can work do, yet still live in poverty, it is clear that poor people who think the way Helen does are mistaken, and so is Carson.
The poverty line is currently $24,600 per year for a family of four, and $16,240 for a family of two. The minimum wage pays just $7.25 per hour, or $15,080 for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, if the worker never misses a day of work. In other words, the minimum wage only puts a family of one above the poverty line.
There are only 12 counties in the entire United States where a worker making minimum wage can afford the rent on a one-bedroom apartment, and zero counties where a full-time minimum wage worker can pay the rent on a two-bedroom apartment. Helen and her husband made less than a full-time minimum wage worker would, and the only place they could afford to live was so substandard it required them to bathe at the home of a relative.
Poverty is not a state of mind; it’s an economic reality. Helen had been trying to get out of poverty for years, but her faith in her own efforts had not made that possible. She had the mind-set the HUD secretary thinks she should, and she believed that it would get her out of poverty. But poor people cannot escape poverty by simply having the right attitude, even though many of them think they can — an attitude that does more to encourage them to blame themselves when things go wrong than it does to help them rise out of poverty.
Jobs that pay a living wage and housing that is affordable for all — not a different mind-set — are the answers to poverty. Cuts to programs that help make medical care, food and housing affordable and accessible to the poor won’t help — they will only worsen the deprivation the poor face. If we want to begin to enact serious solutions that might make a dent in poverty, then it’s up to the financially secure and politically powerful to recognize that blaming poor people for their poverty isn’t going to get us anywhere. The mind-set problem isn’t theirs; it’s ours.
It’s time we realize that people aren’t poor because they don’t work. Too many people work awfully hard to still live in poverty. Carson should be looking out for people like Helen, not stigmatizing them.

7 Moves in My Workshop Schedule – Three Teachers Talk

7 Moves in My Workshop Schedule – Three Teachers Talk

The Age of the Essay, Paul Graham

The Age of the Essay, Paul Graham

Studying comics and setting students up to be thoughtful and creative composers, Ashley K. Dallacqua

Studying comics and setting students up to be thoughtful and creative composers, Ashley K. Dallacqua

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Assignment Choices/ Topics Summer I 2017

EDRD 640/ Summer I 2017

Name
Professional Book
Commentary Topic
Lit Review Topic
Barrier, Elizabeth
Three Arguments against WL
WL
WL
Campbell, Sara Jane
I Am Reading
play v. HW
leveled texts
Coones, Natalie
I See What You Mean
visual literacy
visual literacy
Garrison, Sabrina
Reading Strategies
reading programs/early literacy
reading programs/early literacy
Lawson, Jodi
Word Their Way
spelling
phonics
Mangle, Charnise
Readicide
read alouds/secondary
read alouds/secondary
McDowell, Jessica
The Daily Five
literacy independence/choice
literacy independence/choice
Meece, Nancy
The Homework Myth
homework
homework
Pinson, Bess
Boy Writers
boys literacy
boys literacy
Staats, Tiffany
The Literate Kindergarten
movement in the classroom
movement in the classroom
Stewart, Diamond
The Case Against Standardized Testing
standardized testing/elementary reading
standardized testing

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