Stop Bothering Society, Poor Kid: Help Yourself!

People who know me, know that I am a firm believer in systemic inequalities. Our country has done a lot to reduce the legal barriers that inhibited certain races from realizing their full potential (though much still remains). That said, in a country that was built on slavery and did not fully protect the rights of Blacks in law until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, you have to imagine that the way the country operates is still favorable to Whites. Even if you full equalized everyone in law and you enforced those laws properly, all American institutions and measures of success are largely based upon White measures of success. Specifically, the White middle and upper class. This article may make you uncomfortable if you are squeamish about talking about race and class (or dislike sarcasm), but my philosophy is that you cannot fix a problem by ignoring it and political correctness is the quickest path to inertia.

An article recently published in Forbes Magazine, entitled “If I Were a Poor Black Kid” recently caught my attention. I responded to the article and then to the author’s response in forceful (and recognizable) terms My intent here is not to rehash my response, but to outline the problem with this author’s overly simplistic assessment and to go one step further by showing the math that debunks his “solution.”

Hey Black Kids, Follow the Binary Road!

Anytime someone who has never been poor or Black and who is not a kid decides to write a treatise on what poor, Black children should do…you should be apprehensive. In the article, a man who is a middle class (and always was middle class) technology expert gives advice to poor black children on how they themselves can and should lift themselves out of poverty. This advice includes:

• Getting good grades
• Using all the free sites on the web like Ted Talks, Cliff’s Notes (a real resource for understanding literature), Google Scholar and Project Gutenberg to do well.
• Finding study partners and using Skype to hone your intellect
• Making sure you get into an elite charter school or get a full ride to a private school
• Sucking up to the guidance counselor so that they help you find jobs, college, and other opportunities
• Learning software programming or computers or another "skill."

All of this advice builds to the conclusion that “Technology can help these kids. But only if the kids want to be helped. Yes, there is much inequality. But the opportunity is still there in this country for those that are smart enough to go for it.” (so, you see, poor, Black people are not smart because they aren't trying to not be poor...that is what you are saying, right sir?)

Wait, There Are Holes in This Guy’s Logic!?

Technology was good for this author: rather than giving him a healthy dose of my backhand, he only had to face my comments. As someone who grew up poor in a big city and who ended up going to Stanford, I actually have a lot of relevant experience to comment on this article (which he denied because poor kids, even after going to Stanford, are not smarter than he). A big part of his solution involves poor kids using computers, and he suggests that in the “unlikely event” that they don’t have one, they can just go to one of their wonderful public libraries.

The problem with libraries

As a child, I DID that. I went to the library, and I almost never touched a computer because poor kids (of all races) are competing with retired, unemployed, homeless people and others. Many computers also have a time restriction (in Chicago it was 30 minutes if someone is waiting, which they always were). Further, some of the things he mentions (google scholar, TED) can probably be accessed from a library computer. That said, most do not have the software or hardware for using Skype or for learning how to code. Further, if you don’t live near a library or it is in a sketchy area, the journey there could be dangerous.

Finally, I did a little calculation using Philadelphia to demonstrate the absurdity of his proposal:

According to the most recent census data, approximately 36,000 children in Philadelphia would be considered “poor, Black kids.” (I calculated this by multiplying Philly’s population by the percentage under age 18, multiplied by the percentage of people who are black, multiplied by the percentage of people who are “in poverty,” which probably understates the amount of people who might benefit from his “solutions.”) According to the Philadelphia Public Library Website, there are 68 public libraries. Not all libraries are open right now, no libraries appear to be open on Sundays, so I am again overstating the library’s ability to absorb people. Libraries are open from 9am to 8pm generally 5 days a week and 9 am until 5 pm on Saturdays (not all, but I’ll be generous). That means each library is open 3,285 hours a year. With 68 libraries, the whole system is open 223,380 hours a year. Let’s assume that each has an average of 20 computers (unlikely, but what the heck, we are white and middle class!). Then the system has just under 4.5 million computer hours to offer to poor black kids. That means, each of our 36,000 poor, black kids gets 125 hours with a computer per year if most skipped school for their allotment and if all other library patrons were banned from the computers. This also assumes perfect mobility and that all kids in poor neighborhoods have equal access to equally capacious libraries, which is a stretch.

Now, with about 1,200 of those library hours occurring during school time (40, five-day weeks lasting from 9am until 3pm), each library can realistically only offer 2,085 hours per year, reducing the system’s capacity to 142,000 non-school hours per year, and with 20 computers assumed per library about 2.8 million computer hours. This amounts to 78 hours per “poor, black kid.” How many skills have you mastered by dedicating 78 hours per year? Now if you assume that a kid needs about 30 minutes of homework help for the 200 days that school is in session, that leaves the kid with -22 hours for learning how to code. How many skills have you learned in -22 hours?

As I noted in my article on teachers correcting for systemic inequality, Chicago just moved to close most of its libraries on Mondays. With many cities facing budget shortfalls, the likelihood that public libraries can serve our nation’s poor as much as is needed to escape poverty is decreasing by the day.

Non-logistical problems with the article

Now, aside from the absurd idea that every kid can get the computer access they need to be able to use technology to solve all of their problems, there are many more problems with the author’s arguments:

1. Think back to high school…how was your guidance counselor? I lucked the heck out and I had a great one who helped me apply to colleges, but with a parent that had not gone to college and being in one of the worst public school systems in the nation, the likelihood that this is a sure path is very low.

2. When you are in a single-parent home or have no parents or your parents are working so much that they cannot help you with homework, how do you get good grades? How do you find out about all of these tech resources? How do you know to read interesting middle class guys on Forbes.com to save you from your poverty?

3. The Harvard Business Review recently wrote several articles that note that most people fail to achieve their goals because they are contingent upon things outside of themselves (for example, if I set the goal "get more hits on my blog," that is outside of myself, because you choose to come here, I can't force you...better goals might be: write more posts, leave the link to my blog in other fora, and use social media to attract people to my blog, all of which I can control). Getting good grades depends a lot a teacher’s subjective assessment, having enough food to be able to concentrate on studying/homework, having utilities to be able to see or not shiver to do your homework (or to go online if you are one of the many poor black kids with computers!), or having access to homework help.

4. I noted that the system is probably rigged in subtle ways to favor its creators: higher income whites. Kids are actually quite receptive to this, and kids have to have a lot of willpower to overcome the stigma that being studious often comes with. Many poor black kids get teased or bullied if they try to be studious, often for “acting white.” An educated child also experiences a lot of distance with their less educated family, which can make it tough to keep fighting an uphill battle.

5. The article ignores entirely the severe disadvantages with which most poor kids enter the public school system. The lack of preschool or structured afterschool programming sets them up to be disadvantaged going in. Further, given the amount of tracking (assigning kids to a regular or more accelerated class which usually determines their future trajectory), many kids may already be routed into the “slow lane" of public education.

6. If kids need to fight to get into good schools, then you are admitting that the public school system is failing them in a disproportionate way, which is antithetical to the point of PUBLIC education, as I noted in my article on charters. As the propaganda film “Waiting for Superman” clearly shows, there is not enough supply of charter /private school seats for poor pupils.

7. It is really hard to fight for 78 hours of public library time after school while also getting a job or internship care of your amazing guidance counselor. Further, what if you are an older sibling caring for your younger siblings?

8. Did you skip childhood? Do you know how hard and counterintuitive it is for a child to be that self-disciplined? Part of the advantage that all higher-income kids have is that they are embedded in a web of discipline that is geared toward doing well in school.

9. This article is incredibly paternalistic (I won’t go so far as to say that the author is racist, because I think he believes his ignorant, ill-informed ideas and thinks that they really are a way to help poor kids.). One, it assumes knowledge of something that the author has never experienced. Two, it assumes that poor, black people should work themselves into the ground to be qualified to serve people like him and his business needs.

10. The article completely removes all culpability from the system or from wealthier people. It is rather unfair that his kids, which he notes “have it a lot easier” and not inherently smarter than their lower-income counterparts, do not have to bootstrap their way to the top. I can’t help but wonder if the author were writing in 1840 if the article would blame slaves for not working hard to cozy up to their masters, save up, and buy their freedom. Life is unfair, but let’s not pretend like this is good for our country. We need to attract and keep good teachers. We need for kids to have proper nutrition. We need for kids to have more equal opportunities to succeed or take advantage of an extra-curricular program/job (within the bounds of child labor laws, please!). We need excellent guidance counselors and capacious libraries. We need safe streets. We need to enable working parents to better participate in their kid’s education and put food on the table.

If I Were an Ignorant, Middle-Class Dude

This is my challenge to Gene Marks, the author of this article: put your money where your mouth is. You, as a high-tech employer are probably suffering from a dearth of high-quality talent, so you benefit from having more people to choose from. Further, as a father, it should concern you when kids are unable to escape poverty and realize their full potential. As a taxpayer, you subsidize all the kids’ education that gets wasted when they drop out, their higher incidence of crime (prison is costly!), their higher likelihood to have a teenage pregnancy, and their lower wages that may push them onto the dole. You have a vested interest as a businessman, father, and taxpayer to help poor kids succeed.

I therefore challenge you to go to North and West Philly and take a handful of poor children under your wing. Find them consistent, regular access to a computer and help orient them to all the tools out there. Give them internships. Help them to learn a skill. Give them strategies and structure to help them navigate their school, extracurriculars, and college effectively. Then report back to everyone on all the challenges your article didn’t account for. Report on the amount of resources that it took for you to succeed.

Mr. Marks, my issue with your article was not that the solutions themselves are bad. I used several of them to succeed: I worked my ass off to get good grades and get into magnet schools, I befriended my high school counselor, I went to the library most days of the week, and I taught myself one (and then several) foreign languages. My concern is that it is impractical to expect a kid without any guidance to even think to do all these things, especially when they are logistically improbable. So help some kids to think of these solutions and to carry them out. I want more kids to succeed like me, but I know that my success and theirs is tied to the amount of people who are willing to offer extra guidance and to the ability of the school system and libraries to support and reinforce these kids’ successes.

Act on it!

• Write Mr. Marks or comment on the Forbes article and encourage him to accept my challenge. Write other businessmen and encourage them to offer guidance and cultivate a generation of leaders from the lower-rungs of the socioeconomic ladder of society.
• Take a kid under your wing and offer them access to some of the great tools that Mr. Marks suggests. Consider Big Brothers and Sisters of America or the scores of other organizations working to help kids overcome poverty.
• Fight to keep your local library system open more, give it more resources, and help kids to use them for success.

Speak out!

What other problems do you see with the solutions that Mr. Marks offers? Which of his solutions do you find salient or salvageable?

What do you think it takes for a poor person or someone who suffers from institutional inequality to make it if the system is unable to help them?

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For those who are curious, here is what I wrote to the author:

“Sir, as a white kid who grew up on welfare in a single-parent home and went on to graduate from Stanford, you might think that I would support you. Instead, I am so incredibly disappointed in your ignorant “recipe” for success. I got into a magnet school that my mom found out about by sheer accident. I went to the library and read a lot because it was the only place with adequate heat and electricity. The problem? I got evicted more times than I can count. Our utilities got shut off so often. I did not, contrary to your “teacher friends’” assessment, have a computer at home. Had I known about any of these tools (likelihood is that I would not have and that my mother would have been even less likely to as a waitress working 15 hours a day 6 days a week), I still wouldn’t have been able to use them. What library system could accommodate all the poor kids (of any race) to help them to realize this goal? Where would I find the time to use these resources when I started to work at age 15? Where would I get my stamina to study “coding” when we didn’t have enough food to eat dinner that day? It is articles like these that perpetuate the systemic ignorance of the role class and race play on success and prevent us from real solutions. You clearly do not understand what it is like to be poor, and your blindness is a danger because this article will only reach those who are well enough to-do to have an impact on policies that directly affect your mythical “poor black kid.” And those policy makers will make terrible choices that entrench systemic racism and class division even further in our country. Shame on you.”

Here is his response:

“Thanks for your comment. I still stick to what I wrote, and believe that the opportunity is there for everyone if they study hard and get good grades, use technology to help them get good grades, apply to the best schools they can, get help from their guidance counselor, and make sure to learn a good skill.”

You be the judge. Don’t accept inequality of opportunity. Don’t blame the victims. When one person succeeds, we all benefit in concrete ways. Our country’s future depends on everyone being proactive, not washing their hands of blame.

Unplugging Children

Technology is amazing. So amazing that it is completely rewiring our kids in ways that may fundamentally change the way they think and live their lives. Some believe that we can and should harness technology to ensure that our kids are prepared for the world and to assist their learning. I often disagree (I also think a flip phone is better than an Android, so maybe that says something about me). I am sick of people that can't finish a meal without sending a text, people who can't remember birthdays if they are not on facebook, and sick of being constantly interrupted from tasks at work. That said, my fear is that children who learn to depend on the immediate gratification that pressing a button provides will forget more and more and lose the ability to concentrate, immerse themselves in their passions, and ultimately realize goals that require delaying gratification.

A recent article in the New York Times notes that people are now paying big bucks to unplug, from software that disables your internet to resorts that lack wifi and phones. The article notes that those who break away and spend time in quiet settings are more attentive, remember more, and have improved cognition. Empathy, it turns out, also requires being unplugged. It is not particularly surprising, as screens distance you from people and places, so your connection to them is weaker and thus your ability to put yourself in their shoes is diminished. A recent Cracked post also notes that crutches like Google, Facebook, and Twitter allow you to forget things because you know you can "recall" them later by searching the web. The trick, however, is trying to remember all the things that you could theoretically look up and have forgotten.

Here are my fears about about using technology with kids in class:

1. Technology is expensive and many teachers receive limited training on how to incorporate it into their pedagogy.
   
2. According to researchers Paul Glewwe and Michael Kramer in their April 2005 survey of strategies for increasing student performance (smaller class sizes, teacher training, computers, etc) titled "Schools, Teachers, and Education Outcomes in Developing Countries," computers work best in environments where "both the number of qualified teachers and the quality of employed teachers is notoriously poor."
   
3. Children are becoming more and more distracted. In August 2011, the Washington Post reported that nearly one in ten kids suffers from attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and that the phenomenon has increased over the past decade. Using technology poorly could contribute in a way that ultimately makes them unable to apply themselves to something complex and complete the task.
   
4. Even if they are able to complete a task, I have been distracted by facebook, gmail, several text messages, and a google search while trying to write this post. Children are particularly sensitive to distraction, and we may be creating unnecessary road blocks that make completing something (and feeling the associated sense of pride and achievement) that much harder.
   
5. So many skills require you to warm up and get into them: dance, language, musical instruments, writing, reading, creating ideas for businesses, etc. If kids are constantly interrupted, they may never hit that point of nirvana where they are immersed enough in a task to get that rhythm that is required to truly excel.
   
6. Some people are more effective multitaskers, but being good at balancing may still prevent you from the enjoyment that you get from being immersed so totally in a task that you lose track of time and your surroundings. If we rob our kids of the joys of learning, then how do we keep them engaged?
7. Multi-tasking also overwhelms your brain, and you may crowd out good ideas or insights that would have otherwise occurred.
   
8. Pressing a button or clicking a link and getting an immediate response is actually addictive. If kids get used to this kind of response, they may find other things less interesting or worthwhile if there is no immediate response. Many things in life don't offer that immediate gratification, and that is a problem.
9. Facebook can help you stay in touch, but it can also give the false sense of knowing someone or of being in touch. What often happens is that your friend now becomes like a news article, something distant. Further, you lose the camaraderie of sharing stories and experiences because, well, facebook already told me so why bother? We are eroding our social networks, our ability to interact with others, and our ability to put our talents together to a shared goal.

These are not the only problems, they are not always problems solely of technology, and they are not reasons to completely deny technology. I don't want to come off as a Luddite, as I think technology has a place. That said, the whole point of technology is to do more things better and faster so that we have more free time to enjoy! If we are spending that free time all on the very technology that created it...that is not a win.

My sophomore English teacher was really great at using a wide variety of technology for his classes. He would use videos, music, slideshows, but it would always be structured and usually tied to group work. He was incredibly effective at using technology as a tool, not being used like a tool by technology. I do support a more limited use of technology in schools.

The following are some ways to use technology to improve outcomes for students:

1. Plan your lesson carefully, embedding the technological aspects in a targeted manner for a specific purpose.
   
2. Don't use technology because you can; use it because it makes sense (my teacher would be very clear later on about ways to connect the multimedia and literature and lecture components of his class through very complex worksheets).
3. Technology is not a tool to help a teacher that is too lazy to adequately prepare: good teaching requires preparation, regardless of the amount of technology you use. (If you pull a Cameron Diaz in "Bad Teacher" that is a problem).
   
4. Combine technological and social aspects (as my teacher would use technology to teach part of a concept and then follow up with group work), so that students use it as a part of their education not in place of other ways of learning.
   
5. Be present and lead students through technological aspects: the technology should not replace you, but illustrate what you are trying to communicate to your students (my teacher, for example, would constantly interject or pause films to ensure that we were getting what we should have).
   
6. Give the technology a fixed beginning and end: these boundaries are important to ensure that it doesn't interrupt any learning that was taking place or will take place during other parts of the lesson.
   
7. Do not let the technology overoccupy your lesson plan: if you do not give kids adequate time to think about, talking about, and write about the concept, they will not commit it to memory and they will not develop higher order thinking skills (this may, actually, contribute to some of the problems of students not learning well in college: many people are on facebook during lectures or can even watch lectures online).
8. Technology is about consumption, so be sure to balance any activity involving multimedia with plenty of questions and conversation so that the student is forced to produce as well, as that is where the learning will occur.
9. Use technology to help in classes of mixed proficiency levels to help students advance at their own pace, but be able to monitor and engage any students that you have using divergent activities.
   

My optimal level of technology in classrooms is probably low to moderate compared to others, and I am probably more old-fashioned than many as time passes. That said, I think it is really important to introduce new technologies in a way that makes sense and offers more pros than cons. If it doesn't, maybe stepping a couple decades backward in your lesson would be a good idea.

Speak Out!

• How do you feel about using technology in schools? In general, is it good or bad for children to be plugged in?
  
• What are some ways you or others you know work to ensure that technology is your tool not your master?
  
• Talk about some really effective or really ineffective ways that you have seen technology used in curriculum or in classroom management. Why were they good or bad? What could be improved? What lessons can we learn?

Act on it!

• Find times to unplug so that your child (and you?) is able to interact with others, experience deep engagement with a task or project, and think enough to understand or connect to a concept or activity.
• Ask your kids questions so that they are forced to engage with what they are doing!
• Create finite bounds on how and when your child can use technology.
• Offer encouragement for long-term goals and help your child to remain committed to achieving them.
  
• Monkey-see-monkey-do: if you notice your child is overly addicted to technology, perhaps they are mirroring your own behavior. Find ways to improve yourself and help your kids to join you.
  
• Even when your child is on the iPad or watching Teletubbies, talk to them and make them an active rather than passive consumer. Help them to use technology as a tool, rather than as an IV tube.
  
• Try to limit the amount of different stimuli that are assaulting your child at any given time: encourage them to get the most out of one website; don't let them text while watching tv while computing, etc).