Is it okay to be poor if you're getting by? Should middle class values and expectations be imposed on those in the lower class? Is it offensive to talk about "classes" in polite company? Can't we all just get along? We touched on all of these concepts during a fascinating discussion with the Transformation Team this morning. We're involved in a massive, if not overbearing, process of creating a plan for our agency to evolve over the course of the next ten years. We're trying to organize our strategic plan in a way that we are addressing the vision, values, and mission of CMCA instead of taking what tidbits the government gives us and doing what they tell us to do. The whole of our parts, in other words, should mean people are getting out of poverty (or becoming self-reliant - as our mission states) instead of just having reports that show we have served a lot of people. So this morning we were focusing on reviewing the ten year outcomes staff from throughout the agency have put together over the last three months. We hit a snag on the second strategic commitment which states "Enhance community capacity to ensure all individuals have lifelong learning opportunities." We knew that we were talking about education and whether or not people were getting what they need from school or other training mechanisms to be successful. We were having a having a hard time however getting the concepts down in a way that make sense for our agency and our community. The team that worked on this gave us a framework and laid out the concepts. This morning we came up with a slightly different way to organize those thoughts. Basically we came up with the
concept of having outcomes that focused on 1) traditional education, 2) "survival skills", and 3) enrichment opportunities. So far so good. Relatively quickly we agreed to a ten year outcome that says
“Comprehensive, accessible education ensures all students achieve success.”
(comprehensive means PK-K-12-votech-post secondary, accessible means eliminating barriers, whatever that means to people, parent support, ESL).
Next we wanted to work on "survival" skills. These are job skills, homeownership and care, budgeting, GED and remedial education to ensure understanding of critical concepts and reading, citizenship, lawfulness, parenting skills, etc (we had a list of about 20 ideas). With this idea in mind we started searching for the outcome that identified why these skills are important. One astute team member said "are we talking about being in the middle class here?" After some gasps and thoughtful silence, some of us said "yes, that's what we're talking about." Here's the outcome we drafted:
"Individuals have the skills necessary to participate in a society that is based on middle class norms."
This is where things fell apart. Half the room felt this was an offensive statement and the other half thought this was the holy grail of progressive anti-poverty thinking.
What does middle class mean to you? Does one need to know the rules of the middle class to be successful in our society? Are we perpetuating class stereotypes with this kind of statement? Or does this bring to one's attention the realities of our society? How does a society like ours - moving towards a global economy - maintain a middle class majority?
1 comment:
Let me say up front that I am in the Holy Grail corner.
If you were going overseas, say to India, to affect a change in society wouldn't you acknowledge that there are cultural differences that need to be taken into account in order to affect that change? This feels the same to me. I think we must acknowledge and come to terms with the society that we are working in - one that does have varying cultures, including the cultures of poverty, middle class, and wealth.
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