Lambert’s Cafe is an interesting cultural icon. Seriously small-town and farm-country, the staff all wear red suspenders and bow ties. Seating in long wooden benches, and the drinks in enormous, reusable plastic cups. The cups really captures the ethos. Red, black and blue, they are cheap, thick walled and have see a lot of use, so much so that the logos and markings on many of them are coming off.
They also throw rolls to you from across the room. It’s their thing. It’s a lot of fun, although under and over throws can come as a bit of a surprise to the unsuspecting. Someone is always walking around with tins of sorghum mollasses and apple butter which are quite good.
At any rate, Lambert’s is located at a convenient half-way point between Memphis and St. Louis, so it makes for a reasonable break on the long drive.
Rio de Janeiro slum (right) on hill, contrasted with a more affluent neighbourhood, as viewed from a tram in Santa Teresa; Cristo Redentor is in the left background. (Image by chensiyuan on Wikimedia Commons)
The way we write and the way we speak have an enormous impact on our success in life. Formal language has a sequential, cause-and-effect structure that favors steady continuity which facilitates logical argument. It’s what we try to teach. It is the language of education, office-work and, in our society, the middle class.
Casual language has a very different narrative structure, starting at the emotional high-point, emphasizing relationships and requiring audience participation. It is the language for engaged storytelling. In our society, for the most part, formal language is valued while casual language is not. Casual language is used, most often, by people in poverty.
The separation imposed by these two forms of language defines the “culture of poverty” described by Ruby K. Payne in her book, “Framework for Understanding Poverty“. Payne argues that there are profound cultural differences between the poor and the middle class that tends to propagate poverty from generation to generation.
The poor tend to value interpersonal relationships, emotional responses and short-term interactions while the middle class favors self-sufficiency, logical responses and planning for the future. And these values manifest themselves most obviously in casual versus formal language. Because language is cultural and is passed on with culture, so is poverty. Poverty is self-perpetuating.
[For] students to be successful, we must . . . teach them the rules that will make them successful at school and at work. – Payne (2003)
Payne’s work is popular, over one million books sold and she trains over 40,000 educators a year (Ng and Rury, 2009), but she is not without her strident critics. Image from Jakarta by Jonathan McIntosh
Most of the criticisms appear to be based on the fact that her work is anecdotal, not scientifically based, especially since there is some scientific evidence that conflicts with her observations. Ng and Rury, (2009) emphasize that poverty is a complex issue:
Our analysis, however, demonstrates statistical associations of varying strengths between children’s educational success and a host of different circumstances impacting their lives. Poverty itself is a serious issue, no doubt. Its lone impact may not be as significant as other factors, though, and it often works in conjunction with other disadvantaging variables. – Ng and Rury, (2009)
In thinking of applying this book, Michael Reinke’s review of Payne’s book concludes that, “a recommendation for use of this book either in the classroom or the general workplace would only come with some significant reservations.” Also, “A Framework for Understanding Poverty is a good start for the uninitiated student or professional working for the first time with a low income population. At the same time, it must be read in the context of a broader conversation on poverty. To view it as the sole source for developing classroom strategies would do a disservice to all involved.”
The greatest utility of Payne’s book may be where she discusses instructional techniques and how to improve instruction.
It is in the chapter where Payne has the most experience, “Instruction and Improving Achievement,” that she takes the more immediate approach. Identifying input strategies, designing lesson plans around cognitive strategies, and conceptual frameworks for instruction all provide a starting point for the teacher looking for assistance and for the student trying to learn. It may or may not be true that the concept of “hidden rules” has merit, but the teacher in the classroom–never mind the student–is likely to benefit from more concrete strategies addressing specific concerns. – Michael Reinke
Payne does back up her recommendations for instruction with the scientific literature so, as a result, a lot of it looks like what you see in the Montessori training. A piecewise comparison of Payne’s general instructional techniques and the Montessori Method (see Lillard, 2005) would make for an interesting project. I’ve also come across some good exercises that I think will apply very nicely to middle school.
When we create presentations we combine multiple sources of information and reinterpret them in new ways. Presenting demonstrates more sophisticated learning. Yet as we we organize and categorize we fit the reinterpreted information into models and these models themselves impose their own logic. Models are defined by their own rigidity of organization and thinking that can straightjacket both the viewer and the creator of the presentation.
PowerPoint is a ubiquitous and powerful tool. Most of students favor it for their presentations. However, PowerPoint’s model requires breaking things down into bulleted lists, a hierarchical array of topics and subtopics. It makes it harder to show interconnections.
The U.S. military is becoming worried that their extensive use of PowerPoint is making their job harder.
“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.” – Bumiller (2010)
Elizabeth Bumiller has an excellent article in the New York Times about the effect of PowerPoint on the military titled, “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint“. It’s a great reminder of why students need to practice a variety of different presentation techniques.
slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic, persuasive point. – Bumiller (2010)
White is the color of marriage, in western countries at least, but for the Hindus and Chinese the color of marriage is red. Information is Beautiful has the wonderful quick reference graphic above.
We want students to spend some time in introspection, but it is sometimes difficult to focus and understand what we’re trying to accomplish. The other day I ran across a small mirror, about 10 cm in diameter, sitting in the closet. It was our half hour for Personal World so I handed it to a student who was still trying to settle down and said, “Reflect.”
After the obligatory eye-roll, the student went on with their introspection, twirling the mirror around in their hands. A few days later, the student mention the event in their newsletter article, where it came to the attention of one of our parents, who an Educational Psychologist at a near-by liberal-arts college. She mentioned it to one of her colleagues who’s a social psychologist, and it turns out that there’s a lot of research on the psychological effect of looking into mirrors. In fact, mirrors are an important tool for researchers, but much of the research has found that people are most often negatively affected by mirrors.
social psych has studied extensively the impact of mirrors on people—they increase a state called “objective self awareness” where you become aware of yourself as a social object. It is usually associated with negative affect because it causes us to compare ourselves to our internal standards (and we usually fall short of them). We then make attempts to “escape self-awareness” by doing physical distractions (or even abusing drugs) or by repairing our image by doing good deeds or trying to live up to our standards.
Some of the research is fascinating. Mirrors are extensively used in ballet training, yet Radell et al., (2004) found that ballet dancers performed better after classes in rooms without mirrors. Scheier and others (1981) found that mirrors made people more likely to withdraw from fearful situations.
[A] state of heightened self-awareness can be created when an object in one’s environment, like a mirror, focuses an individuals’ attention on one’s self. This state of self-awareness causes the individual to compare one’s self to ideals presented in the environment. In a ballet class, this could be other students’ performances or a teacher’s demonstration. If the student feels she is not matching the ideal characteristics presented to her, then negative self-evaluation may result. – Radell et al., 2004.
There is some suggestion that heightened self-awareness, though not necessarily attained only through the use of mirrors, does have positive effects, but I’ve barely been able to scratch the surface of the literature.
David McCandless has captured more than a little of the wonderful diversity you can find around the world in this map of International Number Ones. It has some thought provoking juxtapositions. The U.S., for example, is #1 for serial killers while Cuba is #1 for doctors.
The map is also interactive in that if you move the cursor over it, the names of the countries show up. This feature is especially fascinating when looking at unfamiliar parts of the world.
We’ve had quite a number of Langston Hughes‘ poems recited in the mornings. This morning it was “I, too, sing America” and I ran into the above YouTube video, narrated by the author (the narration can be found at The Poetry Archive).
“I, too, sing America” was written in response to Walt Whitman’s “I, Hear America Singing” (Gonzales, date unknown), which ties into the story of advancing civil rights in the United States.
Education Secretary, Arne Duncan will be the commencement speaker at Clark Montessori in Cincinnati.
“Clark Montessori Jr. and Sr. High School shows an extraordinary commitment to encouraging their students to take responsibility for their education, get involved in their community and go to college,” said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “I look forward to congratulating them and celebrating their hard work as their 2010 commencement speaker.” – Official Whitehouse Press Release
