The Case for (and against) Compromise

Recently, President Trump’s chief of staff General Kelly created a storm of controversy when he said, “ . . .  the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.” on the Laura Ingram Show.

This provoked quite a bit of controversy. The most trenchant criticism came from those who feel you don’t compromise about slavery. I would like to go over the facts of the matter to see how defensible this position is.

The nation was born in compromise and of course the most egregious compromise in the constitution was legitimizing slavery thus giving birth to the nation’s original sin. At the time it was probably correctly perceived as necessary if our nation was not to die a stillbirth at its inception.

The compromises of 1820 and 1850 along with other pieces of legislation such as the Fugitive Slave Act were compromise at the expense of slaves to preserve the union.

Between the election of Lincoln and the firing on Fort Sumter that started the war there were several compromises floated to save the union at the expense of slave.  These efforts included the following.

The Corwin Amendment also known as other 13^th amendment simply stated:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of person held to labor or service by the laws of said State. This passed both houses of congress by super-majorities and three state legislatures.  It had the support of president-elect Lincoln.

The Crittenden Compromise would allow slavery in states created below a line roughly between Tennessee and Kentucky drawn to the Pacific.

Lincoln and the Republican Party would allow slavery in the states where it existed but would ban the further expansion of slavery.

Lincoln wouldn’t accept the Crittenden Compromise because this would perpetuate the balance of power between north and south in perpetuity. The south would not accept the Republican position because they would abdicate this balance of power and even with a guarantee that the government would not interfere other factors (repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act for example) would render the institution of slavery economically unviable.[1] 

So in summary “One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.”[2]

The north was okay with allowing slavery to continue in the south, “the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”[3]

Because the two parties could no longer compromise on the state in which this “peculiar institution” would be perpetuated, “one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it (the union) perish, and the war came.”[4]

The reason why at the time of this controversy I was so interested in it and prompted me to write this blog entry is because in seventh grade social studies I learned our country was born in compromise. I learned that the union was saved by compromise in 1820 and again in 1850. But when we could no longer find the a path to compromise the United States experienced by far the bloodiest and most costly war in our history which resulted in a highly imperfect end to slavery and at least at a cultural level a continuation of that war today. In short for nearly 60 years I have held the same position as General Kelly – and still do.

To me both at the time and still today is the notion that compromise is foundational to democracy. This country’s constitution is an exercise in compromise from the bicameral legislature to the co-equal branches of government. Nearly every law ever written in a democracy is the result of compromise.

If we are to look at compromise as one end of a spectrum then the other end is coercion/capitulation. Coercion is forcing one’s will on another and therefore quite undemocratic.  But in writing this and the reason it has taken so long to complete this entry is the fact that I have difficulty getting my head around the idea that coercion is necessary for democratic governments as well.

In 1861 we wouldn’t let the south leave the union.  After 4 bloody years we prevailed in that fight and coerced the south to remain in the union and as a by-product of that conflict, slavery ended (highly imperfectly) in the south.

“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it had attained,” [5] but since both side profited and the north would so readily compromise rather than confront this pernicious institution “ . . .  if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."[6]

Had the north and south failed to compromise or agreed to go their separate ways any time between 1789 and 1861 the trajectory of American history would have been unrecognizable to what we have today. We have to live with the results of the compromises of 1789, 1820, 1850, and the failure to compromise in 1861. 

Certainly, at this time in history we don’t compromise on slavery or equal rights.  That said, we need to be vigilant to seek common ground, to create dialogue, to look for opportunities to compromise because all that is foundational to democracy.

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[1] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/nov/02/kelly-civil-war-and-compromise-almost-was/ This entire argument is from this Politifacts article. 

[2] Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (In my opinion this speech is every bit as good as the Gettysburg Address.)

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid

An Exercise in Self-reflection

I have spent a number of hours writing my last four blog entries about education, a subject which I readily and repeatedly admit I have little more than the usual rudimentary experience (I went to school and sent children to school). I substitute taught nearly 50 years ago and can barely remember the experience. I have currently embarked on a limited teaching venture in a local charter school which was more informed by my preconceived notions of education than instructive in how the system works.  Therefore and in a word everything I wrote about education is dogma – it is true because “they said it.”[1] So why did I choose to believe the particular “theys” that I cite in these blog entries? In this exercise of self-reflection I will in no particular order sum up a few (probably a minority) reasons why my argument took the particular shape that it did.

Ms. Ruby Payne was the first “they” whose argument I bought.  The book was recommended to me by a retired police officer who runs a homeless shelter for women and uses the book as part of his efforts to get these women out of poverty so I had an advocate for the ideas who I respected and who was effectively applying the principles. However, the ideas themselves made sense to me because the internal arguments were logical, the examples (presumably from real life) were compelling, but probably most importantly they fit with how I see the world work. I believe success depends on organization and perseverance and much of the non-material poverty that holds people back according to Ms. Payne results from a deficit of these resources.

I believe James Heckman when he sites non-cognitive learning as crucial because, when a Nobel Prize winner talks (on NPR), I listen. I am impressed with academic credentials. The argument itself must make sense to me but if it comes from someone like this I am likely to not only listen but also believe. Similarly, teaching emotional intelligence comes from the Yale program dedicated to that pursuit led by Marc Brackett who I heard speak.  I am very likely to believe those sorts of credentials.

I cite the Kipp Schools and use their statistics to support their success. This is less than ideal if one is looking for disinterested information sources. I do feel that if these statistics weren’t accurate they would be questioned by other sources.  Public school teachers who commented on the Kipp results did not question there accuracy but brought up the fact that charter schools can self-select students.

Among the reasons I chose these sources for my story on education is that I respect the referring source, I respect the academic credentials of the source, and probably most importantly their data supports a story I can create that fits with my emotional predispositions.  As mentioned elsewhere, it is our emotional predispositions that for the most part drive the “they” we listen to.[2]

For this particular subject the motivating principle is equality of opportunity and the moral emotional predisposition is fairness.  I don’t think this is so important to me because of an altruistic nature.  Equality of opportunity is not merely the founding principle of democracy it defines democracy. That is, the less equality of opportunity the less democracy we have. 

Democracy is the foundational belief on which the health and wellbeing of my relations and myself depends.  Therefore, anything that diminishes equality of opportunity weakens my fundamental wellbeing. I defend equality of opportunity as a matter of survival.

My position, I am sure, would stand in stark contrast to a libertarian who would see longer public school time as little more than a socialist plot promulgated by eastern intellectual elites to indoctrinate our children.  He would site other sources or create a completely different argument for how our children should be raised.

I have taken a stand on public education. I readily acknowledge but make no apologies for the fact that it is wholly based on dogma. This is the level at which we all conduct our public discourse and participate in our democracy. A newsfeed (from a particular source) by a particular person (friend or foe) feeds into the story we already have about how we should look at this particular subject. Our knowledge is incomplete and our perspective is by definition subjective.

The take home lesson is this. If we are going to close the divide of mistrust and polarization that is so badly hurting this country we need to go into any conversation with an understanding and acknowledgement of our predispositions; we need to get a sense of the subjective perspective of the people we engage; and we need look for common ground and points of on which we can compromise.  

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[1] http://geoffhberg.blogspot.com/2017/01/

[2] http://geoffhberg.blogspot.com/2017/02/font-face-font-family-font-face-font.html

The Cost of Better Schools - and the Benefits

More school hours, days, and years are all going to cost more money. I will look at teacher pay, where the money comes from, and how it might be distributed.

Teacher pay:

The average teacher salary for 2016 – 2017 was $60,000 with a range by state from $40,000 to $80,000. Recent teacher strikes in West Virginia ($45K Rank 48), Oklahoma ($45K Rank 49) and Arizona ($47K Rank 43) have highlighted what is perceived to be the plight of underpaid teachers.[1]

On the other hand critics of the argument for higher teacher salaries site the fact that teachers have a 6 hour work day, work fewer days per year, have generous defined pension benefits, and have a kind of job security that is not commonly found in the private sector.[2],[3]

For the purpose of this post lets divide the issue into salary and benefits.

To begin with teachers who are making 25% less than the mean teacher salary probably have a case that they are underpaid. Second the six hour day doesn’t include lesson planning, test and work correction, and after hours parent and student counseling. Finally in the new world order teachers would have more scheduled work hours and days. Another reason teachers in this system should get paid more is because in this system they are very good teachers and should be paid accordingly. Teaching is hard and important work.  As long as they are delivering at the expectations of this new system they should have the pay and respect commensurate with the quality of that work. Therefore, increases in pay would be in order.

With respect to benefits, first I think all public service retirement plans should be transformed from a defined benefit to a defined contribution.  The costs then would be known up front and more clearly negotiable. Politicians would not be in the position of making promises and then underfunding them for their short-term gain.

The problem of health care expenses for both employees and retirees would be solved with the passage of the GHE.[4] Health care costs would either be known and fixed or shifted to another sector of the economy.

With respect to job security, people should be hired, fired, promoted, or disciplined based on the quality of their work no matter what profession they are in. Inevitably, some people are employed in a profession they either never were or no longer are capable of doing competently.  Therefore employment should not be based on tenure, seniority, longevity, or union status.  Nor should it be based on budget constraints or the capricious judgments of administrators and public officials. The ongoing mentoring and team building through the use of cameras in the classroom could also be a means of monitoring teacher proficiency and making sure that teachers are performing at whatever level of competence we expect them to achieve and maintain.

Paying teachers more by acknowledging their extracurricular efforts, longer hours, and more days along with a switch to defined contribution retirement plan and employment based on measurable performance would be an appropriate approach to changing teacher pay. In addition to whatever the increase cost of teacher pay, there is the additional cost of 2 years of all day pre-K. If that is the case, where will the extra money come from?

I am not sure how much this would cost but I have a pretty good guess – about $180 billion per year. There are 3.2 million public school teachers. If their salaries increased by $40,000 per year that would cost $128 billion. In addition there would need to be 500,000 preschool teachers at an average annual cost of $100,000 per year for another $50 billion.

I would propose we could get that money from healthcare and I would do that by amending my Guaranteed Healthcare Entitlement (GHE). I proposed that the $3.3 Trillion we spend on health care be fixed until, as a result of medical inflation in other countries, our per capita medical costs matches the per capita expenses of other OECD countries. I would suggest amending that formula by saying we decrease that spending by an additional 1% for each of the first six years so that we get to that OECD mean faster and we could use that money to fund the added expense of our education system.  I don’t think this would stress the medical profession (any more than the GHE would). In the first year there would be $33 billion dollars that would grow to $198 billion by year six. It will take a while to reconfigure the system and train literally an army of pre K teachers so we don’t have to come up with the money in the first year. That said that is a lot of money coming from the federal government so how would it be distributed?

With respect to this I have a few very generic suggestions. I would say money should be distributed to states in the form of block grants. Perhaps universal all day pre-K should be a priority. Expanding school hours and days are measurable changes that could be compensated through these grants. However, I feel mandated curricula standards from Washington would be counterproductive. Recommendations on how to foster emotional intelligence and character along with intellectual intelligence would be helpful but states and local school districts should be left to determine how to implement such instruction.

At the state level I would suggest implementing a Guaranteed Student Entitlement which I briefly mentioned in my January 31 blog entry. To remind you, in 1992 the then commissioner of education for Rhode Island Peter McWalter proposed what he called the Guaranteed Student Entitlement (GSE).  In the program the cost of a solid education for each student would be determined.  This would cover basic subjects, electives, arts, and physical education.  The state would guarantee that each student would have this amount spent on him or her throughout the state.  Recognizing that there are students with special need, these students would get an additional stipend above the initial base stipend.  At the time the base stipend was approximately $7000 and additional funding of $1500 went to students who were either low income or had English as a second language.  They would get $3000 if they were identified with a learning disability. 

This system didn’t fly and I think one reason was that it would require local school districts to cede funding to the state. However, if additional federal funding were available through the state then this could go to pay for extra school hours and days in all school districts and the additional funds for educating disadvantaged students.  This would keep most of school funding local and provide the financial support for both parts of this program.  This would address one issue brought up in more than one comment by former teachers about charter schools – the fact that they were selective and didn’t have to take difficult students or can dismiss them back to public schools. In this system whatever school ends up with them would get higher pay per student for dealing with these types of students.

Ever since the publication of a Nation at Risk[5] the quality of our educational system has been called into question and after 35 years we have very little to show in the way of improvement. This is my proposal for a way forward. I would also add that in addition to improving our educational system this is an anti-poverty program with attendant saving in welfare costs, gun violence cost, out of wedlock births and abortions that go with poverty. It is also hopefully an inoculum against mental health issues for the next generation. Finally if we do, through education, raise most of the next generation out of poverty the cost of this kind of program should go down.

This is my two cents on the cost of education in this country. I would love to hear yours.[6]

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[1] http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2018/04/teacher_pay_2017.html

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/08/07/low-teacher-pay-and-high-teacher-pay-are-both-myths/#4ef2eeb031af

[3] https://www.usnews.com/debate-club/are-teachers-overpaid/average-public-school-teacher-is-paid-too-much

[4] See Fixing Healthcare Part 3C: Odds and Ends http://geoffhberg.blogspot.com/2018/03/fixing-healthcare-part-3c-odds-and-ends.html

[5] https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html

[6] Any comments you leave in the comment section come directly to me and also can be seen by other readers.

How Do We Train, How Do We Measure, Is This for Everybody?

Educating educators:

If anyone is going to teach they are going to need to know who they are teaching, what they are going to teach, and how to teach it. Therefore, those who are teaching poor students are going to have to know and be able to identify in their students the ways their students are poor, how this effects their thinking and the hidden rules of their culture, and how to work with them to learn and incorporate the hidden rules of the middle class. A Framework for Understanding Poverty would be a starting point and incorporating the curriculum that Ms. Payne has devised in her AHA process[1] as part of standard teaching curricula would make be helpful as well.

Non-cognitive skills again are things like perseverance, self-control, social intelligence, curiosity, gratitude, enthusiasm, and optimism. These can be incorporated into the standard academic curriculum[2] and taught at any age[3]. This is critical for academic achievement to translate into lifetime success. Training in this skill set will be critical for current and future teachers. 

In addition to academic classes as part of teacher training and continuing teacher education it would be imperative to have on site peer reviews on a regular basis to talk about and solve problem situations.  In order to do this effectively I would favor cameras in the classroom[4] so that issues to be addressed could be captured in real time and discussed among colleagues in regularly scheduled review sessions. With every profession, medicine, engineering, law, one goes through school to get the basics but hones their craft through experience.  For teachers to share their experience and develop their craft with the help of their peers on an ongoing basis would help to ensure that continual improvement in that craft.

It is true in any service profession but probably more so with teaching that the attitude of the teacher has a lot to do with their effectiveness. Teachers deal with children so providing a caring nurturing environment is crucial to the success of their teaching. Peer review of the type I described can spot problems in this area and more importantly provide support and feedback to help educators maintain the high standards we want them to aspire to.

Measuring achievement with students:

The end points are softer in the area of cultural intelligence and non-cognitive learning but they are measurable and they can be incorporated into academic testing. Testing for cultural intelligence could involve role-playing exercises. (How do I balance my checkbook? How do I budget for the month with this income?) Testing non-cognitive skills could include tests of perseverance and cooperation. (How does this student solve problems and work with their team in building a robot for their science project?)  Identifying these skills as learning objectives and measuring their attainment is key to making education more complete.

The other 60%:

Will all this extra schooling with emphasis on hidden middle class rules and non-cognitive learning help the middle class and upper class majority provide something vital that is missing in the current curricula? I think there is something vital that is missing and addressing that with a curriculum change could provide it.

6.7% of Americans are clinically depressed.[5] But that rate is 35% among college students[6] and 27% among medical students, [7] those who would be considered among the most academically successful in their age group.

I think the following additions to the academic curriculum would be helpful for all socioeconomic classes but particularly important in addressing this problem.

Teaching meditative practice:

Victor Frankl said, "Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Among other things meditation trains the brain to expand that space so that those who become proficient in it can respond to the world in a more thoughtful and rational way.  This is helpful in both emotional and intellectual health.

Teaching emotional intelligence:

Emotional intelligence is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.[8] Emotional intelligence is a subset of non-cognitive skills that can be taught and contribute significantly to personal and academic success.[9]

The other non-cognitive skills:

It is hard to be anxious or depressed if a student is enthusiastic and optimistic. Of course, sometimes the going is hard and that takes perseverance.  That said even with the best attitude, talent, and effort one can muster sometimes we just don’t succeed. Failure may not be an option if you are member of Special Forces but it is inevitable for the rest of us and also an opportunity. We learn and can grow from our mistakes. How we deal with failure is as much a measure of our character as whatever makes us successful. Teaching children to accept responsibility and to learn and grow from their mistakes would unburden them from an unnecessary sense of failure and give them the capacity of resilience.  

Adding meditative practice, emotional intelligence, and non-cognitive learning skills to the cognitive academic curriculum would help all students across the socioeconomic spectrum to have the cognitive skills emotional intelligence and strength of character to be happy, healthy, and successful as adults.

In the next blog I will talk about how we would pay for all of this. I didn’t think I would write so much about something about which I know so little but I guess that is what this whole experiment is all about.

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[1] AHAprocess.com

[2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w20749

[3] http://www.creativitypost.com/psychology/can_non_cognitive_skills_be_taught

[4] I can imagine some push back on this. On the one hand, the object is not at all punitive but educational. On the other, as far as big brother in the classroom, we are talking about public schools with up to 25 witnesses for anything that goes on in the room.

[5] https://adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics#

[6] http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/06/college-students.aspx

[7] https://www.amsa.org/anxiety-and-depression-the-risks-of-medical-school/

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence

[9] http://ei.yale.edu/who-we-are/mission/

What comes out depends on what goes in – and how it gets there

The object of education for anyone is to provide something that’s missing – how do I read, how do I paint, how do I interpret Plato? Regardless of the exact curriculum or method of teaching there are social, emotional, and cognitive skills that poor children are missing and need to be taught if they are going to successfully escape poverty.

According to their website, KIPP schools aspire through their teachers to create a rigorous academic environment that also provides role models and support systems, characteristically missing in poor families, as Ms. Payne has pointed out[1], to help their students out of poverty.

Children in poverty, particularly generational poverty, literally come from an alternative culture. They need someone to model the different cultural norms so they know how one thinks, talks, and acts in the culture they aspire to. Perhaps more importantly, by providing a nurturing relationship that teacher or series of teachers can be the key relationship that transports children out of poverty.

Support systems provide the how-tos of the new culture. How do you do this algebra assignment when you don’t understand it; how do you balance a checkbook; how do you dress for a college or job interview? Having the time and taking the time to identify and focus in on the needs of the students and providing this kind of support, again in a nurturing manner, will help students bridge the gap to the middle class.

I have no first hand knowledge of how well KIPP schools achieve these goals but they are goals all schools should aspire to. Being aware of these differences and being able to provide resources to overcome these differences should be a crucial part of the education of teachers and the task of teaching. Schools and teachers should be judged on how well they provide this kind of service.

With respect to curriculum, regardless of what cognitive skills are taught non-cognitive skills should be embedded into the course work and/or taught as separate class work. Non-cognitive skills include perseverance, self-control, social intelligence, curiosity, gratitude, enthusiasm, and optimism.[2] These character traits are as important to scholastic and life success as any cognitive learning skill. Furthermore, while they are most easily instilled at an early age they can be learned even later on in a scholastic career.[3]

With respect to the academic curriculum my only suggestions are the following.

I would recommend ensuring that all students are bilingual by the time they enter first grade. This would be accomplished by immersion in English in preschool for children for whom this is a second language and immersion in a second language in preschool for children fluent in English. This is when brains are optimally designed to learn language. A former classmate of mine has run a Montessori school outside of Chicago and English-speaking 3 year olds are immersed in one of 3 languages and come out at age six fluent in the immersion language.

I would consider introducing students to a musical instrument at around age six. There are a host of cognitive and non-cognitive skills that can be learned in the practice of a musical instrument.

In my next entry, I take a stab at how we might educate teachers, how we might measure achievement, and how we would pay for all this.

In addition, while one in five children live in poverty (compared to 1 in 8 adults) and 44% live in low-income families, that still leaves a majority of children who are middle class or above. In my next entry I will also take a stab at what if any benefit this structure might have on the majority of students.

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[1] I reference my own blog. http://geoffhberg.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-framework-for-understanding-poverty.html

[2] Again KIPP schools are exemplary is that this is part of their mission and curriculum http://www.kipp.org/approach/character/

[3] In the early 90’s Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman noted that students who took the GED to earn a high school equivalent diploma studied an average of 32 hours. In subsequent studies he found that compared to high school graduates they tended to do poorly in jobs, the armed services and marriage. What they lacked were non-cognitive skills. I came across this idea in the following This American Life segment.  It is very worthwhile to listen to. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/474/back-to-school

Improving Public Education - More is better

This discussion of education is based on the following assumptions.

1.     Democracy should afford its citizens equality of opportunity.

2.     Education, both historically and actually, is a vehicle – probably the principle vehicle for democracy to afford equality of opportunity.

3.     Financial status affords middle class and wealthy students material and cultural advantages that tend to tilt the playing field in their favor.

4.     Changes in the way we educate our children can provide better outcomes for everyone[1] and at the same time help to level playing field for the socially and economically disadvantaged. That said, I am going to principally focus on leveling the playing field. At the end I will make some comments on how this specifically may help the more materially advantaged classes.

As noted in A Framework for Understanding Poverty people are poor in more ways than a lack of money. These include deficiencies in emotional resources, knowledge resources, spiritual resources, support systems, and role models. In addition, people living in poverty learn hidden rules that help them survive in poverty but are different than the hidden rules of the middle class and keep them from moving up the socioeconomic ladder.

I would contend that school can provide these non-financial resources and provide an environment to learn the hidden rules of the class they aspire to but only if children start younger and go to school for more hours/day and more days/year. That would mean children would start school at age three, have a 9-5 school day, and go at least 200 days per year with no school break longer than 3 to 4 weeks.

The model for this can be found in KIPP schools. These are publicly funded K-12 charter schools. Their typical school day is 7:30 to 4:00. Because they are publicly funded they operate on the public school calendar although they offer summer school. Nearly 90% of their students are poor [2] but perform academically at or above grade level when compared with conventional public schools[3]. I would suggest starting this model for preschool, starting the school day later for health and academic reasons[4], and extending the school year to avoid summer learning loss[5].

The principle object of these extended hours days and years is provide an immersion experience in literally an alternative culture from the culture of poverty so that poor children can successfully move out of poverty and into the middle class and possibly beyond.

Of course, if the academic quality of those extended hours, days, and years of schooling is subpar then expanding this time will be a waste of it. That quality will depend on the quality of the methods, the teachers, and the curriculum. I know nothing of teaching methods and close to nothing about teacher standards or curriculum. However, with respect to the latter two I would like to suggest some parameters and I will do that in my next entry. 

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[1] The United States is below average in math and about average in reading and science compared to 34 OECD countries https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/PISA-2012-results-US.

[2] http://www.kipp.org/results/national/#question-1:-who-are-our-students

[3] http://www.kipp.org/results/national/#question-3:-are-our-students-progressing-and-achieving-academically

[4] https://www.cdc.gov/features/school-start-times/index.html

[5] Summer learning loss is the phenomenon that students regress and lose up to a month of learning after the 10-week summer vacation. This is especially true of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. https://www.brookings.edu/research/summer-learning-loss-what-is-it-and-what-can-we-do-about-it/

A Framework for Understanding Poverty – no really

In 2016 J. D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis was published to critical acclaim. Of the book, the Economist said, "You will not read a more important book about America this year." It the story of one family of the Appalachian diaspora that moved out eastern Kentucky and poverty after WW II, fell back into it in the 70’s and 80’s and how the author escaped but left behind the poverty that still haunts the Midwest.

This entry is not about Hillbilly Elegy. It is about a book that, in an organized and systematic way, explains every facet of the origins of poverty that J.D. Vance experienced, the patterns of culture and family structure that he experienced in poverty, and offers instruction in how to break those patterns and where Vance’s escape from poverty is a prime example.

The book is A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne.[1] Ms. Payne is a educator and she wrote this book as a workbook for teachers and guidance counselors to help them not merely deal with poor students but help them develop skill sets to get them out of poverty. More than 20% of children in this country live in poverty.[2] This is not only a disproportionate part of our population but we are 34^th out of 35 developed countries[3] with respect to the percent of children in poverty.

A patient of mine who is a retired police officer and runs a shelter for homeless women and children told me about the book and for me I did “not read a more important book about America” in 2016 and I read it on the heels of reading Hillbilly Elegy.

In the introduction she has “Key points about Poverty” and some statistics, about poverty.  Most important in this are the factor that get people out of poverty. These are that it is too painful to stay, a vision or a goal, a special talent or skill, a key relationship.

In chapter one she enumerates the factors that define poverty. Poverty is more than a lack of money. People who are poor also lack:

1.     Emotional resources, the ability to withstand hardship and persevere. She considers this the most important resource

2.     Mental resources, ability to process information

3.     Spiritual resources when present help the individual to not feel hopeless or useless.

4.     Physical resources, People with disabilities lack the ability to be self-sufficient

5.     Support systems, people or groups who provide physical, financial, or emotional support for the person in poverty

6.     Role model/mentor to model the hidden rules of the class (the middle class) to which you should be aspiring if you want to get out of poverty.

7.     Knowledge of the hidden rules of class

 

 

In chapter 3 she enumerates the hidden rules of poverty, middle class and the wealthy. People in these different classes have different relationships to very fundamental aspects of our life. The following are some examples:

	POVERTY	MIDDLE CLASS	WEALTHY
Money	To be used and spent	To be managed	To be conserved and invested
Education	Valued and revered as abstract but not as reality	Crucial for climbing success ladder and making money	Necessary tradition for making and maintaining connections
Time	Present most important. Decision made for moment on feelings and survival	Future most important. Decisions made for future ramifications	Traditions and history most important. Decisions made partially on basis of tradition and decorum

The point she makes here is that first people in poverty aren’t making “bad” choices because they are stupid; they are making the choices they make because that is what allows them to survive in poverty. Second, in poverty crises arise in the moment so time is compressed and everything is about the current moment so middle class skills like perseverance and delayed gratification are hard to master in this environment. Third the object of education (and perhaps by extension any anti-poverty program) is to educate the poor to the hidden rules of the middle class so that when they enter the middle class world (at work or school) and can find success there and hopefully find their way out of poverty.

In chapter four she delineates generational poverty, defined as two generations living in poverty.  Unlike situational poverty in which one has fallen out of the middle class into poverty, in generational poverty the hidden rules of the middle class are unknown and the hidden rules of poverty are more deeply ingrained. In addition, the family structure, discipline, and language (as presented in chapter 2) are such that they only reinforce the hidden rules of poverty.

The last half of the book consists of strategies for educators to use to address these issues. Furthermore, this book is a publication of an organization Aha Process that offers education of these strategies.

Virtually every aspect that Vance described about poverty from the multiple aspects of poverty, to the hidden rules, to the family trees. For me what was so important about this book was that while Vance's personal saga is about Appalachian poor, she make crystal clear, that poverty regardless of race color or creed regresses to the same mean and the path out is identical for all who are born or fall into poverty.

Vance suggestion that the government throwing money at poverty has largely been a waste may be because we are not focusing in on the other co-conspirators in the cause of poverty.

J. D. Vance credits his grandmother’s mentoring as his salvation from poverty and doesn’t think government can reproduce that. Of the factors that get people out of poverty (see above) the only one outside the individual is a mentor to lead them. Ms. Kane suggests that this is a piece of the puzzle that education might provide if the teaching community embraced it.

In my next blog I am going to give my thoughts on education and how to change it. Since this is something about which I know nothing there will probably be a lot of dogma. (Although I will try to reference my dogma as much as possible.) However, I would very much like to hear your thoughts (and corrections).

 

 

 

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[1] The version I read is the 2003 edition. This can be purchased used on Amazon for under $10. The version I bought is pictured above.

[2] http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html

[3] https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc10_eng.pdf