Mythbusting Poverty and Education

country but set it on a better path forward. Every week I invite thought leaders to share their knowledge and expertise with the wokaf community, and I invite you to join us over on Patreon for just five dollars a month at patreon dot com slash wokeaf to hear five new shows every single week featuring these stimulating discussions as

well as my own perspective. This week, I wanted to share with everyone the beginning of my interview with doctor Mark Rank, co author of Poorly Understood What America Gets Wrong about Poverty. I asked Mark to bust open some common myths about poverty, and what he told me is important to share with everyone. What are some of the common misconceptions and myths that we share as a country

around poverty. There are obviously a lot of different myths out there, but I think one to start with is this idea that well, poverty is going to affect somebody else but not me, that it's an issue of them rather than an issue of us. And one of the ways we start out in the book is to say, actually, if you look across people's lifetimes, majority of Americans at some point will experience a year below the official poverty line.

So between the ages of twenty and seventy five, sixty percent of folks will find themselves in poverty, and three quarters of Americans will find themselves either in poverty or near poverty for at least a year. And this really puts a different perspective on it because it says, you know, actually, poverty is an issue that affects most of us in one way or another. So that's that's one sort of variation on this idea that the myth of poverty being an issue of them rather than an issue of us.

There are many others as well. For example, we often our image of poverty is often that of folks of color in inner city areas that have been in poverty for long periods of time and that are using social safety net programs. It turns out, it turns out that that's that image is not correct. Actually, most people in poverty do not live in high poverty inner city neighborhoods. They live in a variety of places. They live in suburbs,

they live in rural America. So I guess the point of this is to say that the reach of poverty is very wide, and it affects a lot of folks at some point in their lives. Why do you think that we, I mean, from your research and the work that you've done throughout your career. Is it just the storytelling aspect that needs to shift because we've perpetuated the lie the media And when I say we, I mean the media has perpetuated the lie with regard to poverty

and what we're seeing. You know, but while we have this image right of black and brown people in the inner city, in these dilapidated communities as being impoverished, what we know to be true is that if a four hundred dollars bill were to come due in most American household, seventy five percent of those households would be unable to

pay that bill. Right, we know that healthcare continues to bankrupt families, which is why we had the push for the Affordable Care Acts so that you're regardless of your economic situation, you could still get healthcare outside of an emergency room. So we hold those facts while we still perpetuate the lie. And so how do you think that

we disrupt that? Well, I think you know, one thing is is addressing that and addressing that with you know, good solid evidence and facts and research, which is what I've tried to do throughout my career. But I think you know, an interesting question here is to step back and to say, look, so we go in the book, we go through all kinds of miss and basically show

that those myths are not true. So the question is, if that's the case, how come we continue to hold those myths, which I think one of the things you're asking here. And we can step back and say, well, who's benefiting from these myths? Who's benefits from the perpetuation of these myths? And I think we can point to several different groups. One would be political actors and politicians.

Politicians have used the issue of the undeserving for the lazy person on welfare to score political points over and over and over again. So Ronald Reagan was infamous in terms of his use of the welfare Queen Bill Clinton talked about we want to end welfare as we know it. Donald Trump railed against welfare recipients, and what that's done is it's scored them political points in the American population,

and so they've had a vested interests. But there's also we could step back and say, you know, actually, these myths that the poor are deserving of their situation really benefits those on the top, because what it says is that I don't have any responsibility. It's not my problem if you're poor. Whereas if we say, actually, these problems are structural. It has to do with our economic policies, it has to do with our political and policy programs.

If we do that, then we have to say, you know what, we all have a responsibility in terms of this. So I think that's a really important question to ask. You know, who's benefiting from these myths? And I would argue that the folks that have benefited have been basically the folks in power who are content with the status quo of widening inequality and more of the gains going to those at the top. This week on woke f Daily, I also spoke with Evan Stone, co founder and CEO

of Educators for Excellence. His organization survey teachers working through an unanticipated year of remote learning and staggering reopenings, and he joined me to share his results. The full conversation was so extensive and informative, so to hear the full half hour interview, head over to patreon dot com slash woke a F and subscribe. But for now, here's Evan Stone telling us how teachers have been working through educating in a pandemic and what he thinks the Biden Harris

administration can do to pave the road ahead. As folks that listen to Woke a F No, they know that I'm a former educator. My sister is currently an international school teacher. She's in Bangladesh teaching there remotely from her apartment. And I have always had a deep affinity for educators. I think that it is the most important job. It is why I went to get my master's degree in

early childhood education. It's why I wanted to work on the hill in education policy because I felt that if we could create a global citizenship, if we could create critical thinkers, if we could create young people who believed in their power and responsibility, then we could change this country. And that's what I've always been about, is how do we change this country? How do we make it more equitable?

And so teachers have been going through. I can't even imagine. Honestly, I can't even imagine what it would be like, because I know how I feel just having my life turned around, as everybody else's life has been turned upside down. But I have largely been able to take my profession into my home and do it and interview adults all day who know how to sit in front of a zoom. Whether or not we want to we do. How have teachers been, evan like, how are the teachers that you

talk to the administrators? How are they faring? Because if you don't have kids, I don't think that you have a deep window into what the educator's experience has been over the past year. Yeah, I mean, like many of us, teachers are grappling with this change, but they had, as you mentioned, both their personal lives and their professional lives

completely upended. One of the things we know is over three quarters of teachers are caretakers, either they have children or elderly family members or others that they are taken care of. And so in the spring of last year, we did the right thing by saying we don't understand this virus, we don't know what it could mean. We need to close schools because it could have been a massive threat to teachers and to students. But in doing that,

teachers had never taught online. For the most part, they school systems didn't have the structures set up to support educators to move their lessons online. Their curriculum wasn't adaptable to an online environment, and their students, particularly historically marginalized populations of kids, didn't have the technology and the access, and so there was no guidance, There was very little support, and we were waiting for teachers to solve this problem.

Then I think over the course of the summer, there was an expectation of we're going to solve the virus, and so let's plan on what reopening could look like. And it seems like we all wasted time that could have been spent on thinking about how we support teachers to prepare for a year that was going to be mostly virtual. And so teachers are grappling with this. They are feeling like they aren't as successful as they want

to be, and they're feeling very guilty about that. They are feeling totally overwhelmed with trying to manage their lives during this pandemic and an entirely new profession that looks entirely different, and they're grappling with how disconnected they feel from their colleagues and from their students. So they are

looking for solutions to this. They really want to get back into the classroom, and they want to get back in front of their kids, but they want to do that in a safe way, and they're feeling right now like there is a narrative that is pitting teachers against students that I don't think is representative of where most educators are. And it's really unfortunate that that's sort of the conversations turned into, like opening schools for kids or

you keep schools closed to keep teachers safe. Is I think a far too simple narrative that doesn't represent where educators actually are on these issues. And is I think penny blame on them for things that they're not fully responsible for or don't have complete control over. What kind of faith do you have, Evan in the new administration to be able to create some type of continuity in

our public education system. We know that the last administration did a gut job, and that there was a let's just say, a detracting of money going into public schools and a rerouting into religious entities and private schools and charter schools and what have you. How do you feel your level of hopefulness about this new administration and the desperate rehabbing that our K through twelve system needs. I am hopeful, but I have been hopeful in past and

have been disappointed. So this time I want my hope to be complimented with some real strategy and a greater level of advocacy from across the country. And I'm hopeful for a couple of reasons. One, President Biden has made clear he wants to triple funding for Title One. There's probably nothing more important that the federal government could do than to get more dollars directed towards our most disadvantaged populations of students like that would be a huge win

if they can actually execute on that. To his current plan, his current stimulus or Recovery bill would drive dollars to prevent massive layoffs of teachers from across the country and disproportionately protect teachers of color and teachers in low income schools. So we can't go through the same thing that we went through in the last recession and see ourselves lose thousands and thousands of teachers at a time when we're

already struggling to recruit and retain teachers. Three. Doctor Cardona, who's the Secretary designate but flew through his initial confirmation hearing, is somebody we have worked closely with in Connecticut, and I believe both his life experience and his leadership in Connecticut have demonstrated that he is committed to the real role of the federal Department, which is about increasing equity

in our education system. It was created the Federal Department of Education was created to drive equity in a system that we knew was inequitable, and so I do think that will be his primary focus. We've worked closely with him on teacher diversity in Connecticut, and so I think that will be a key focus of his And so I'm optimistic about the team that they've built, the priorities that they put out to start, But there is a lot of work to do, and it can't be done

just by the administration. Congress needs to play a role, and we've continued to see Congress do as little as possible to help drive change across the country. Folks, if you've been following me for a while, you know that I often say that you need to take a break before you have a breakdown. Well, this week, I am practicing what I preach and we'll be taking a break to myself all week to wind down and decompress. But if you are a Patriot subscriber or thinking about subscribing,

don't worry. I still have five full prerecorded shows Monday through Friday. If you haven't subscribed yet, It's always a great opportunity to hear so much more of the conversations I share here every week, so head over to patreon dot com slash woke f and check it out. It really does take a lot of work to put out five fresh, hour long shows every single week, so I appreciate everyone who listens and supports me and trying to

make the world a woker place. Until next week or when I see you on Patreon, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.