Myth Of The Culture Dissertation Example

Free Myth Of The Culture Dissertation Example

Your Name Instructor NameCourse NumberDateThe Myth of the Culture of Poverty: A Review Gorski (32) opens The Myth of the Culture of Poverty with an anecdote about his friend Janet, an educator who is rapidly losing hope for the students in her classroom. Janet perceives the children in her classroom to be unmotivated, caring little for their schoolwork, and without parents that support them through their school years. Gorski (32) argues that Janet has bought into the so-called myth of the culture of poverty: that people living in poverty all have one monolithic culture and that they share attitudes and beliefs about education that negatively impact them in the learning environment. The myth of the culture of poverty is said to stem from Oscar Lewis, who in 1961 wrote about families in small Mexican communities in The Children of Sanchez (Gorski, 32). Lewis felt that these communities all shared fifty attributes, including a lack of future-based planning and frequent violence. Unfortunately, the results of this study led to a generalization about poverty and the children that live in it: that these people all share a single culture that holds them back from achieving in the same way that middle- or upper-class students do. Gorski (33) argues that this has fed into the myth that a culture of poverty exists and that people that live in poverty are naturally different from wealthy people. Gorski (34) makes a convincing argument that this is not the case. Several of the myths that we believe about poverty: that poor people are less motivated, value education less, and have poor language skills; can all be explained by close examination of their working and living conditions. Parents who live in poverty are not lazy compared to their wealthier peers, but simply work longer hours. They are not less involved in their children´s education by choice, but because these long hours prevent them from attending meetings and school functions (Gorski 34). The argument works...