P. L. Thomas, Associate Professor of Education (Furman University, Greenville SC), taught high school English in rural South Carolina before moving to teacher education. He is currently a column editor for English Journal (National Council of Teachers of English) and series editor forCritical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres (Sense Publishers), in which he authored the first volume--Challenging Genres: Comics and Graphic Novels (2010). Additional recent books include Parental Choice?: A Critical Reconsideration of Choice and the Debate about Choice (Information Age Publishing, 2010) and 21st Century Literacy: If We Are Scripted, Are We Literate? (Springer, 2009) co-authored with Renita Schmidt. He maintains a blog addressing the role of poverty in education: http://livinglearninginpoverty.blogspot.com. His teaching and scholarship focus on literacy and the impact of poverty on education, as well as confronting the political dynamics influencing public education in the U.S. Follow his work @plthomasEdD and Radical Scholarship.poverty
us culturally mythology has a negative idea of poverty
we don't want to recognize inequities, a social stigma
because to that - we connect that to school...
we say - buck up and try harder
howard gardner - leading minds
http://livinglearninginpoverty.blogspot.com/p/debunking-ruby-paynes-framework-of.html
goes against our idea in work ethic..
the real irony - the ed reformers who want to discount poverty - say it over and over
they ignore poverty by mentioning it
they say sure - poverty is a problem but not an excuse
no child chose to be poor
