Poverty Matters: Using Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Rather Than Deficit Thinking to Move Students Into Interstitial Spaces of Power and Knowledge

• In Event: Education for Human Possibility or Human Capital?

Abstract

The intersection of human capital theory (Becker, 1967) and deficit thinking (Valencia, 1997, 2012) compound the effects of a corporate economy on the growing gap between the rich and the poor in education. According to the deficit thinking model, people blame the poor for their status because of their internal flaws (Ryan, 1971). This blaming abdicates policy makers who decry structural change. But, the blaming can force students, often with the assistance of culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings), to interstitial spaces (Foucault, 1977), where they build their power, knowledge, and possibilities for the future.
The Payne (1996) professional development model encourages teachers to “fix” students’ speech patterns, adjust students’ behaviors, and train them in the acceptable ways of response to middle class culture. By contrast, a culturally rich, linguistically appreciative education empowers children to learn and to learn to critique their learning. If students in the classroom see the richness of their cultures respected, doors of opportunity open (Ladson-Billings, 2002). Examples and practices in student’s lives become foundational for their growth in power and knowledge.
This paper will analyze examples of those moments of pushback against a deficit model, against a human capital model that renders the child passive and objectified. Pushback creates often fragile interstitial spaces that reveal possibilities for change in the structure of our educational system and corresponding changes in our society. Using Carspecken’s (1996) reconstructive analysis, this study will review Payne’s professional development on poverty with teachers (Payne, 1996), a student research project on high school dropouts (Radigan, 2008), English Language Learners’ (ELLs’) performances of Boal’s theatre of the oppressed, (Radigan, 2003) and the recent banning of ethnic studies in Arizona high schools (Precious Knowledge, 2012).
The interstitial spaces students created opened possibilities for growth and change in the schools, communities, cities, states, and the nation. The student research project created an interstitial space where the mayor’s wife, a school superintendent and a local television station heard students explore the life obstacles of the poor that permeated their work in schools. The ELL students performed sketches demonstrating the oppressive actions they experienced in their classes and challenged members of their audience to reenact with them these sketches in the spirit of equity. Ethnic studies students from Tucson High School in Precious Knowledge created an interstitial space in their classrooms that caused them to take pride in their heritage and to invite their superintendent and state senators to view the academic rigor of their classes. In a state subcommittee meeting the legislators challenged the Americanism of ethnic studies with two repeated binaries: “American v. anti-American, us v. them.” The response of the student activist to these binaries was one of compromise as she said her classes “do not teach us to be anti-American, they teach us to embrace America with all of its flaws.” The students in these spaces were negotiating their positions as democratic citizens, illuminating possibilities of transforming praxis.

Author

• Judy A. Radigan, University of Houston