RUBY, RUBY

I am part of the best virtual education community on the planet--the Teacher Leaders Network--where smart, thoughtful teachers show up every day to think out loud. Lately, we’ve been talking about Ruby Payne and her 'Framework for Understanding Poverty.' It’s been an especially yeasty conversation; some of the TLN who have experienced her workshop think she offers useful tools for understanding behaviors and communicating with students and their families, and others find her work somewhere between offensive and fraudulent. 

There’s been more than a little heat and passion—lots of TLNers work in challenging schools, and some have personal experience with desperate poverty, racism and classism. In the middle of our debate, the NY Times magazine ran a long article on Ruby Payne, generally supportive, but including some pointed criticisms as well. This is not merely a juicy back-and-forth on a popular presenter—it speaks directly to the issue of how we will get the best (however defined) teachers into high-needs schools, and what they can do to improve things once they get there. 

It’s a critical issue in teacher distribution—how do teachers, who are often solidly middle class and white, learn to work effectively with children and families from different backgrounds? Can they? When the Ruby Talk finishes on TLN, it will provide a rich accumulation of teacher thinking on sensitive issues of race and class in education, from some very accomplished practitioners—definitely worthy of future blogs. 

What I find intriguing is that the most virulent backlash against Ruby Payne comes almost exclusively from academia, critical theorists and those who feel that a nice white lady from Texas has no business writing (and making money) on issues of poverty and class. Academics and the social justice crowd are vigorous, indefatigable arguers (it’s their job) and they’ve been all over Payne, once again, triggered by the NY Times article. I regularly read—and admire—lots of leftish education blogs, magazines and research articles. It’s kind of my natural socio-political home, although I sometimes find the lack of theory-into-practice stunning. It’s one thing to be dead right about social inequities and injustice in schools, but quite another to propose workable strategies to begin dealing with those gaps, words and ideas that can be used tomorrow in an actual classroom.

Payne’s claim that there are patterns of behavior and hidden rules that govern life in chronically poor, middle class and wealthy families is a particular irritant to these critics. As a first-generation college graduate from a working-class family, Payne’s description of the values and habits of families aspiring to the middle class ring true for me. There are complex, convoluted hidden rules of survival in academia, as well—value hierarchies of philosophies, players and conventions, loaded with quick-spring traps to catch people whose beliefs are not aligned.

The great French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, spent decades and volumes describing the material and intellectual markers of cultural and economic capital, from preferred music to styles of furniture, all buttressed by dense, nearly inscrutable theory and research.  Minus the theory and rigorous research, of course, Ruby Payne has done pretty much the same thing for the very limited arena of classrooms—and made it readable. I suspect part of the anger directed at Payne is because she herself is not playing by the hidden rules of the ivory tower. She has achieved what academics most seek—attention and respect—by ignoring the rules and going with her gut. The fact that her work is so popular with practitioners should tell us something.

Comments

[Bob]

Thoughtful post. I think I know what yu mean, but please say directly, so I don't miss your inference: What does, "The fact that her work is so popular with practitioners" tell you?

[Jane]

Hi, Nancy,

I've been reading (and respecting) your blog for awhile and had been expecting you to weigh in on The Ruby Dialogue having seen your comments over at Joanne Jacobs and seeing also that you just subscribed the Teachers and Class listserv.

I am an academic --also first generation --and I fear saying or doing anything that would reinforce your sense of people like me. My whole K-12 teaching career was with poor kids and I now teach a lot of first-generation college students.

And I'm appalled at what Payne writes about poor people.

I've sort of gone out of my way to establish my "cred" because I don't want to be dismissed because of the work that I now do. I like to think that it's fair to keep disagreements on the content of the argument, not on the supposed "hidden motives" that someone might be bringing to an argument. It seems very fair to take people at face value unless they give reason to think otherwise.

I truly hate it when people pull out French theorists to intellectually trump people. It's a favorite sport among academics. But since you mentioned Bourdieu, I'll say that most sociologists have a very different take on his work than you do and would see pretty vast differences between him and Payne (but I completely agree with you about the denseness of his language).

This isn't the place to go into a long discussion about Bourdieu, but I'd really enjoy more conversation about different perspectives about why we have class differences in the first place and what we might do to alleviate poverty.

I'm very curious about one thing that you wrote: No one who has studied social class would deny that there are hidden rules of behavior within and between classes. I'm curious about where you're getting the idea that academics object to that point. You're so right -- this debate is about very important things, so it seems so important to be clear about exactly what it is that we are trying to say.

Respectfully and collegially,

Jane

[Nancy Flanagan]

Hi Bob.
What I'm trying to say is that there is research and critical theory--and then there are ideas that thoughtful teachers can use, immediately, to think differently about their relationships and work with their students. And they are not the same thing.

The gap here isn't in intent: most teachers became teachers to get kids excited about learning as a means to better lives, just as most educational sociologists are dedicated to revealing "invisible" embedded practices that give some kids the (very) short end of the educational stick. The difference lies in what to do about this gap in opportunity. Do we write papers, or do we try to help students adapt to school world, inequitable as it may be? Until we fix the world, students have to live there--and go to school.

Teachers find Ruby Payne's stuff useful. They say so over and over again. I think that every time a teacher stops and asks herself whether she is filtering a negative response to student behavior through her own values, that's probably a good thing.

Most practitioners say they like Ruby Payne. Most critical theorists just can't understand how so many people can be so wrong. I think we need to ask teachers what they like about her work--and value what they say, from the front lines.

[Nancy Flanagan]

Hello, Jane.

First--no fears! Some of my best friends are academics (smiling). As I said, my natural intellectual inclination leans toward a critical perspective, and I greatly admire your postings and work, as well.

I have attended two RP workshops, and read the book (lousy writing, BTW), and just can't see how RP is damaging students and teachers or setting back the cause of social justice. Plus--and this is a big plus for me--lots of teachers whose practice and thinking I respect believe her work has been useful in their teaching. There are other people I like much better, Lisa Delpit for example, who also says we need to help kids understand middle class values and habits so they can thrive in an unjust world.

I think hidden motives are part of the argument here, unfortunately--and that's the reason I brought up Bourdieau (which I intended as a probably too-subtle joke). The idea that I would attempt to intimidate anyone by quoting Bourdieu is actually pretty hilarious.

I am hardly a Bourdieu scholar; I read a lot of his writings last year (involuntarily) and found him fascinating (when I could stay awake through page-long sentences). The folks in my seminar had great fun placing ourselves on his "fields," identifying our personal levels of cultural capital, just as teachers and administrators say that finding themselves on Ruby's grids sometimes reveals unexamined belief, assumptions and social assets. I am NOT saying that Ruby Payne is some kind of low-rent Bourdieu!!--only that she has also identified markers of cultural capital, and the same people who understand Bourdieau as seminal to understanding social structures want to see Ruby Payne humbled and humiliated. I'm trying to figure out why--and my hunch is that those hidden motives, politics and academic competitiveness play a part. I know that people teaching in universities want to see themselves as seekers of truth, but all objectivity is filtered through perception--and some of Payne's critics have been downright savage. I truly don't get the level of invective that's been aimed at her...Hitler?

And I do understand that a big piece of the traditional study of sociology is identifying hidden rules, if you will, and the distinction with Payne is that people disagree with her particular hidden rules and cultural markers, not the process of finding them.

I have to say that nothing in the workshops I attended struck me as derogatory or as negative, limiting stereotypes. There were regular, repeated cautions about the purpose of looking at patterns of behavior, and lots of encouragement to see practical strengths in kids who don't have many material or family resources. No "blame the victim"--and I was listening for it.

I understand that Payne's research base might charitably called skimpy, but research doesn't often drive educational practice. I put some faith in the thousands of educators who say that Payne has changed their teaching.

Also looking forward to more dialogue, on this and other issues! Thanks for your thoughtful response, Jane.

[Jane]

I'll look forward to more conversation, also, Nancy (I'm typed out for today). I have no idea who that "hitler" person was. I did alerts upon searches yesterday to find others writing about the NYT article, but would not give that person the satisfaction of a click on his blog.

I'm very grateful that while there certainly are academics who get buried inside of their own theoretical worlds, and while there are teachers who get lost within their own values and perceptions of kids, there are many others who are constantly moving between those worlds to keep track of the view from each.

(And it's exactly to support conversations between teachers and faculty and others interested in class and education that I launched the teachersandclass@u.washington.edu list, but alas, that list remains pretty quiet. Let me know if you (or others reading this) have thoughts about what might spark that conversation.

Jane

[aha! Process, Inc.]

Hello Nancy,
Thank you for your thoughtful dialog on Ruby Payne and the article about her in The New York Times. We have linked your blog to ours. Stop by sometime and join our discussion!

[Ellen Holmes]

At first, I was going to take a pass on responding to this topic. Maybe it was because the topic was way to close to home for me. I'll spare readers my rags to solvency story but suffice to say I know a think or two about generational poverty. When I listen to Ruby Payne I find myself on a very high and precarious fence. If I step to one side, I buy into all that Ruby claims about working with families of poverty and their behaviors. If I step to the other side, I discount the years of teaching experience that tell me a good deal of Ruby's strategies and observations are sound and similar to mine. In my mind, what allows me to reconcile with Ruby Payne is what I heard her say when I saw her in person last fall. She does not clain to be a researcher or a theorist. She was a teacher who observed and reflected on what worked with the students and families she encountered. As long as this is the way that her work is used and viewed, I'm all set.