The pedagogy of poverty
My friend Rachel sent me a link to an essay by the always feisty Alfie Kohn in which he condemns “the pedagogy of poverty.” That’s when schools serving low-income kids of color focus the curriculum on drill-and-skill, repetition, and maintaining a tightly controlled routine. Kohn advocates a pedagogy centered on “meaning and understanding.” He writes,
Rather than viewing the pedagogy of poverty as a disgrace, however, many of the charter schools championed by the new reformers have concentrated on perfecting and intensifying techniques to keep children “on task” and compel them to follow directions. (Interestingly, their carrot-and-stick methods mirror those used by policy makers to control educators.) Bunches of eager, mostly white, college students are invited to drop by for a couple of years to lend their energy to this dubious enterprise.
Is racism to blame here—or perhaps behaviorism? Or could it be that, at its core, the corporate version of