Poverty Stereotypes: Fact or Fiction? Evidence of this use of labels can be found in the 2006 motion picture The Ron Clark Story.

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Matt Bernstein

Writing Seminar

Essay 3

Poverty Stereotypes: Fact or Fiction?

        Is the notion that children in impoverished inner cities suffer academically a stereotype or a cultural fact?   Schools in these poor communities are often at a disadvantage due to violence and vandalism, as well as a lack of funding and qualified teachers willing to put themselves into sometimes daunting situations.  Families living in lower-class areas commonly have more than one child and live in unfortunate housing situations and conditions.  By stereotyping all inner-city children to be of this environment, we are propagating common misconceptions of how we perceive and value each other.  Many filmmakers rely heavily on one-dimensional, over-simplified portrayals of people or groups of people for the purpose of quickly and easily establishing a movie character’s traits.  Evidence of this use of labels can be found in the 2006 motion picture The Ron Clark Story.  

        The made-for-television film follows the inspiring tale of an energetic, creative, and idealistic teacher who leaves his small North Carolina hometown to teach in the sixth grade at a public school in Harlem.  Through his passionate use of special rules for his classroom, highly innovative teaching techniques, and an undying devotion to his students which includes helping them cope with their problems, Clark is able to make a remarkable difference in the lives of the children.  Even when Clark is overcome with pneumonia, he continues to work with his class via videotaped lessons, hoping that he can raise their test scores to an acceptable level, or possibly even higher.  In the end, Mr. Clark's class not only passes the state exams, but scores even higher than the school’s “Honors” class.

The Ron Clark Story is bursting with stereotypes touching upon poverty, racial tension, and inner-city education.  After Clark arrives at the school he will eventually teach at, the principal introduces him to the “Honors” class.  The students in this class are portrayed as orderly and learned.  Meanwhile, Clark is focused on the “lower-achieving” class across the hall, which is mostly comprised of black and Hispanic children.  The students in this group are depicted as unruly, disrespectful, and unconcerned with education.  When Clark establishes that he would like to take on the challenge of teaching these kids, the principal responds, “You can’t be serious.  All of these students have problems with learning, discipline, and social skills.”  The stereotypes shown in this portion of the movie try to instill the concept that poor minorities, specifically blacks and Hispanics, are disorderly in the classroom and tend not to achieve as highly academically as students of other racial and economic backgrounds.  But is this stereotype in fact true?

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Author and educator Ruby K. Payne believes so.  According to Payne, poor children exhibit certain “behaviors related to poverty,” which entail laughing when disciplined as a “way to save face in matriarchal poverty,” physically fighting because they “do not have a language or belief system to use conflict resolution,” not following directions because “little procedural memory is used in poverty” (Sato and Lensmire).

Rather than blaming the negative effects of stereotypes as the reason poor children often fall below average on standardized tests, some academic writers instead claim that the lackluster teaching provided in low-income schools is at fault.  Alfie ...

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