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The Pedagogy of Poverty
Versus Good Teaching
It will be formidably difficult to institutionalize new forms of pedagogy for the children of poverty, but it is
worthwhile to define and describe such alternatives.
By Martin Haberman
Why is a “minor” issue like improving the quality of urban teaching generally overlooked by the popu- This article
was originally
lar reform and restructuring strategies? There are several possibilities. First, we assume that we know what published as
teaching is, that others know what it is, that we are discussing the same “thing” when we use the word, and “The Pedagogy
that we would all know good teaching if we saw it. Second, we believe that, since most teachers cannot be of Poverty Versus
changed anyway, there must be other, more potent, teacher-proof strategies for change. Third, why bother GoodTeaching”by
with teaching if research shows that achievement test Martin Haberman.
Phi Delta Kappan
scores of poor and minority youngsters are affected 73, no. 4 (December
primarily by their socioeconomic class; affected 1991): 290-294.
somewhat by Head Start, school integration, and hav-
ing a “strong” principal; and affected almost not at all
by the quality of their teachers?
THE PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY
An observer of urban classrooms can find exam-
ples of almost every form of pedagogy: direct instruc-
tion, cooperative learning, peer tutoring, individual-
ized instruction, computer-assisted learning, behav-
ior modification, the use of student contracts, media-
assisted instruction, scientific inquiry, lecture/discus-
sion, tutoring by specialists or volunteers, and even
the use of problem-solving units common in progres- Deepen your
sive education. In spite of this broad range of options, understanding of
however, there is a typical form of teaching that has this article with
become accepted as basic. Indeed, this basic urban questions and
style, which encompasses a body of specific teacher activities on page
acts, seems to have grown stronger each year since I PD 16 of this
first noted it in 1958. A teacher in an urban school of month’s Kappan
the 1990s who did not engage in these basic acts as Professional
the primary means of instruction would be regarded Development
as deviant. In most urban schools, not performing Discussion Guide
these acts for most of each day would be considered by Lois Brown
prima facie evidence of not teaching. Easton, free to
members in the
Thinkstock/iStockphotos digital edition at
kappanmagazine
MARTIN HABERMANis a distinguished professor emeritus of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. .org.
kappanmagazine.org V92 N2 Kappan 81
The teaching acts that constitute the core • Record-keeping is the systematic
functions of urban teaching are: maintenance of a paper trail to protect
• Giving information, the school against any future legal
• Asking questions, action by its clients. Special classes,
• Giving directions, referrals, test scores, disciplinary
actions, and analyses by specialists must
• Making assignments, be carefully recorded. This slant is the
• Monitoring seatwork, reason that teachers are commonly
• Reviewing assignments, prejudiced rather than informed by
• Giving tests, reading student records; yet the system
• Reviewing tests, regards their upkeep as vital. (In
• Assigning homework, teacher preparation, neophytes are
• Reviewing homework, actually taught that student records will
reveal such valuable information as
• Settling disputes, students’ interests!)
• Punishing noncompliance, • Parent conferences give parents who
• Marking papers, and are perceived as poorly educated or
• Giving grades. Whenever otherwise inadequate a chance to have
things explained to them.
This basic menu of urban teacher func- students are involved • Staff meetings give administrators
tions characterizes all levels and subjects. A in planning what they opportunities to explain things to
primary teacher might “give information” by will be doing, it is teachers.
reading a story to children, while a high likely that good • Assorted school duties are essentially
school teacher might read to the class from a teaching is going on. police or monitoring activities that
biology text. (Interestingly, both offer simi- would be better performed by hired
lar reasons: “The students can’t read for • guards.
themselves,” and “They enjoy being read Whenever students The pedagogy of poverty appeals to sev-
to.”) Taken separately, there may be nothing are involved with eral constituencies:
wrong with these activities. There are occa- explanations of
sions when any one of the 14 human differences, 1. It appeals to those who themselves did
acts might have a beneficial ef- not do well in schools. People who have
fect. Taken together and per- good teaching is been brutalized are usually not rich
If the pedagogy of formed to the systematic exclu- going on. sources of compassion. And those who
poverty will not sion of other acts, they have be- have failed or done poorly in school do
force the learning of come the pedagogical coin of not typically take personal responsibility
low-level skills, how the realm in urban schools. for that failure. They generally find it
can it be used to They constitute the pedagogy easier to believe that they would have
compel genuine of poverty — not merely what succeeded if only somebody had forced
thinking? teachers do and what young- them to learn.
sters expect but, for different 2. It appeals to those who rely on common
reasons, what parents, the com- sense rather than on thoughtful analysis.
munity, and the general public assume teach- It is easy to criticize humane and
ing to be. developmental teaching aimed at
Ancillary to this system is a set of out-of- educating a free people as mere
class teacher acts that include keeping “permissiveness,” and it is well known
records, conducting parent conferences, at- that “permissiveness” is the root cause
tending staff meetings, and carrying out as- of our nation’s educational problems.
sorted school duties. While these out-of-class 3. It appeals to those who fear minorities
functions are not directly instructional, they and the poor. Bigots typically become
are performed in ways that support the ped- obsessed with the need for control.
agogy of poverty. Since this analysis deals
with the direct interactions characteristic of 4. It appeals to those who have low
urban teachers and their students, I will limit expectations for minorities and the
myself to a brief comment about how each of poor. People with limited vision
these out-of-class functions is typically con- frequently see value in limited and
ceptualized and performed in urban settings. limiting forms of pedagogy. They
82 Kappan October 2010 kappanmagazine.org Thinkstock/iStockphotos
believe that at-risk students are served sources of encouragement transform them-
best by a directive, controlling selves into directive authoritarians in order to
pedagogy. function in urban schools. But people who
5. It appeals to those who do not know the choose to become teachers do not do so be-
full range of pedagogical options cause at some point they decided, “I want to
available. This group includes most be able to tell people what to do all day and
school administrators, most business then make them do it!” This
and political reformers, and many gap between expectations and
teachers. reality means that there is a per-
vasive, fundamental, irreconcil- Below the façade of
There are essentially four syllogisms that able difference between the control by teachers
undergird the pedagogy of poverty. Their motivation of those who select is another, more
“logic” runs something like this. themselves to become teachers powerful level on
and the demands of urban which students
1. Teaching is what teachers do. teaching. actually control,
Learning is what students do. For the reformers who manage, and shape
Therefore, students and teachers seek higher scores on the behavior of their
are engaged in different activities. achievement tests, the teachers.
2. Teachers are in charge and pedagogy of poverty is a
responsible. Students are those source of continual frus-
who still need to develop tration. The clear-cut
appropriate behavior. Therefore, need to “make” students learn is so ob-
when students follow teachers’ viously vital to the common good and to
directions, appropriate behavior is the students themselves that surely (it is
being taught and learned. believed) there must be a way to force
3. Students represent a wide range of students to work hard enough to vindi-
individual differences. Many cate the methodology. Simply stated, we
students have handicapping act as if it is not the pedagogy that must
conditions and lead debilitating home Whenever be fitted to the students but the students who
lives. Therefore, ranking of some sort is teachers involve must accept an untouchable method.
inevitable; some students will end up at In reality, the pedagogy of poverty is not
students with the a professional methodology at all. It is not
the bottom of the class while others will technology of supported by research, by theory, or by the
finish at the top. information access, best practice of superior urban teachers. It is
4. Basic skills are a prerequisite for good teaching is actually certain ritualistic acts that, much like
learning and living. Students are not going on. the ceremonies performed by religious func-
necessarily interested in basic skills. tionaries, have come to be conducted for their
Therefore, directive pedagogy must be • intrinsic value rather than to foster learning.
used to ensure that youngsters are Whenever students There are those who contend that the ped-
compelled to learn their basic skills are actively involved agogy of poverty would work if only the
in heterogeneous youngsters accepted it and worked at it. “Ay,
REFORM AND THE PEDAGOGY OF POVERTY there’s the rub!” Students in urban schools
Unfortunately, the pedagogy of poverty groups, it is likely overwhelmingly do accept the pedagogy of
does not work. Youngsters achieve neither that good teaching is poverty, and they do work at it! Indeed, any
minimum levels of life skills nor what they going on. teacher who believes that he or she can take
are capable of learning. The classroom at- on an urban teaching assignment and ignore
mosphere created by constant teacher direc- the pedagogy of poverty will be quickly
tion and student compliance seethes with pas- crushed by the students themselves. Exam-
sive resentment that sometimes bubbles up ples abound of inexperienced teachers who
into overt resistance. Teachers burn out be- seek to involve students in genuine learning
cause of the emotional and physical energy activities and are met with apathy or bedlam,
that they must expend to maintain their au- while older hands who announce, “Take out
thority every hour of every day. The peda- your dictionaries and start to copy the words
gogy of poverty requires that teachers who that begin with h,” are regarded with compli-
begin their careers intending to be helpers, ance or silence.
models, guides, stimulators, and caring Reformers of urban schools are now rais-
kappanmagazine.org V92 N2 Kappan 83
ing their expectations beyond an emphasis on hanced and elicited by an authoritarian ped-
basic skills to the teaching of critical think- agogy and do not represent students’ true or
ing, problem solving, and even creativity. But ultimate natures. Young people can become
if the pedagogy of poverty will not force the more and different, but they must be taught
learning of low-level skills, how can it be used how. This means to me that two conditions
to compel genuine thinking? Heretofore, re- must pertain before there can be a serious al-
formers have promulgated change ternative to the pedagogy of poverty:
strategies that deal with the level of fund- The whole school faculty and school
ing, the role of the principal, parent in- community — not the individual teacher
volvement, decentralization, site-based — must be the unit of change; and there
management, choice, and other organi- must be patience and persistence of ap-
zational and policy reforms. At some plication, since students can be expected
point, they must reconsider the issue of to resist changes to a system they can
pedagogy. If the actual mode of instruc- predict and know how to control. Hav-
tion expected by school administrators ing learned to navigate in urban schools
and teachers and de- based on the pedagogy of poverty, stu-
manded by students and dents will not readily abandon all their
Any teacher who their parents continues to know-how to take on willy-nilly some
believes that he or be the present one, then new and uncertain system that they may
she can take on an reform will continue to not be able to control.
urban teaching deal with all but the cen- For any analysis of pedagogical re-
assignment and tral issue: How and what form to have meaning in urban schools,
ignore the pedagogy are students taught? it’s necessary to understand something
of poverty will be The pedagogy of poverty is Whenever students of the dynamics of the teacher/student inter-
quickly crushed by sufficiently powerful to under- are being helped to actions in those schools. The authoritarian
the students mine the implementation of see major and directive nature of the pedagogy of
themselves. any reform effort because it de- poverty is somewhat deceptive about who is
termines the way pupils spend concepts, big really in charge. Teachers seem to be in
their time, the nature of the be- ideas, and general charge, in that they direct students to work
haviors they practice, and the principles and are on particular tasks, allot time, dispense ma-
bases of their self-concepts as learners. Es- not merely engaged terials, and choose the means of evaluation to
sentially, it is a pedagogy in which learners in the pursuit of be used. It is assumed by many that having
can “succeed” without becoming either in- isolated facts, good control over such factors makes teacher “de-
volved or thoughtful. cision makers” who somehow shape the be-
teaching is going havior of their students.
THE NATURE OF URBAN CHILDREN AND YOUTH on. But below this façade of control is another,
When he accepted the 1990 New York • more powerful level on which students actu-
City Teacher of the Year Award, John Taylor Whenever students ally control, manage, and shape the behavior
Gatto stated that no school reform will work of their teachers. Students reward teachers by
that does not provide children time to grow are asked to think complying. They punish by resisting. In this
up or that simply forces them to deal with ab- about an idea in a way, students mislead teachers into believing
stractions. Without blaming the victims, he way that questions that some things “work” while other things
described his students as lacking curiosity common sense or a do not. By this dynamic, urban children and
(having “evanescent attention”), being indif- widely accepted youth effectively negate the values promoted
ferent to the adult world, and having a poor assumption, that in their teachers’ teacher education and un-
sense of the future. He further characterized dermine the nonauthoritarian predisposi-
them as ahistorical, cruel and lacking in com- relates new ideas to tions that led their teachers to enter the field.
passion, uneasy with intimacy and candor, ones learned And yet, most teachers are not particularly
materialistic, dependent, and passive — al- previously, or that sensitive to being manipulated by students.
though they frequently mask the last two applies an idea to They believe they are in control and are re-
traits with a surface bravado. the problems of sponding to “student needs,” when, in fact,
Anyone who would propose specific forms living, then there is they are more like hostages responding to the
of teaching as alternatives to the pedagogy of students’ overt or tacit threats of noncompli-
poverty must recognize that Gatto’s descrip- a chance that good ance and, ultimately, disruption.
tion of his students is only the starting point. teaching is It cannot be emphasized enough that, in
These are the attributes that have been en- going on. the real world, urban teachers are never de-
84 Kappan October 2010 kappanmagazine.org Thinkstock/Hemera
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