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being able to use words as tools to negotiate conflict is crucial. Many times the fists are used in poverty because the words are neither available nor respected.
The one deep experience that distinguishes the social rich from the merely rich and those below is their schooling, and with it, all the associations, the sense and sensibility, to which this education routine leads throughout their lives.
As a selection and training place of the upper classes, both old and new, the private school is a unifying influence, a force for the nationalization of the upper classes.
- C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite

    Hidden Rules Among Classes

    One of the biggest difficulties in getting out of poverty is managing money and just the general information base around money. How can you manage something you've never had? Money is seen in poverty as an expression of personality and is used for entertainment and relationships. The notion of using money for security is truly grounded in the middle and wealthy classes.
    The question in the quiz about using a knife as scissors was put there to illustrate the lack of tools available to those in poverty. Tools in many ways are one of the identifiers of middle class-from the kitchen to the garage. Therefore, the notion of maintaining property and repairing items is dependent upon having tools. When they are not available, things are not repaired or maintained. Students do not have access to scissors, pens, paper, pencils, rulers, etc., which may be part of an assignment.
    One of the biggest differences among the classes is how "the world" is defined for them. Wealthy individuals view the international scene as their world. As one told me, "My favorite restaurant is in Brazil." Middle class tends to see the world in terms of a national picture, while poverty sees the world in its immediate locale. Several fourth-grade poor students told us when they were writing to the prompt, How is life in Houston different from life in Baytown? (Baytown is 20 minutes from Houston), "They don't have TVs in Houston."
    In wealth, to be introduced or accepted, one must have an individual already approved by that group make the introductions. Yet to stand back and not introduce yourself in a middle-class setting is not the accepted norm. And in poverty it is not unusual to have a comment made about the individual before he/she is ever introduced.
    The discussion could continue about hidden rules. The key point is that hidden rules govern so much of our immediate assessment of an individual and his/her capabilities. These are often the factors that keep an individual from moving upward in a career-or even getting the position in the first place.

    WHAT DOES THIS INFORMATION MEAN IN THE SCHOOL OR WORK SETTING?
? Assumptions made about individuals' intelligence and approaches to the school and/or work setting may relate more to their understanding of hidden rules.
? Students need to be taught the hidden rules of middle classnot in denigration of their own but rather as another set of rules that can be used if they so choose.
? Many of the attitudes that students and parents bring with them are an integral part of their culture and belief systems. Middle-class solutions should not necessarily be imposed when other, more workable, solutions might be found.
? An understanding of the culture and values of poverty will lessen the anger and frustration that educators may periodically feel when dealing with these students and parents.
? Most of the students that I have talked to in poverty do not believe they are poor, even when they are on welfare. Most of the wealthy adults I have talked to do not believe they are wealthy; they will usually cite someone who has more than they do.

     

CHAPTER 4

Characteristics of
Generational Poverty
    Life is lived in common, but not in community.
- Michael Harrington,
Four Horsemen
    enerational poverty is defined as having been in poverty for at least two generations; however, the patterns