Ruby Payne. Dubious. This is not debatable. The sad thing is that the supremeness of her evilness, which pollutes the world of teacher and administrator "professional development" like the mining of U238 pollutes the soil and water of Native land, has been lost on the institutional field of education. Those in Ed Schools seem oblivious to the nefariousness of her work.
Payne, for those of you not yet in the know, runs a for-profit company, aha! Process Inc, which claims as its mission “to positively impact the education and lives of those in poverty around the world.” It supports this mission by selling racist and classist culture of poverty crap to a range of should-know-better organizations, such as the National Association of Elementary School Principals, which I just today learned recently mailed a copy of Payne’s latest book to all of its members. A very sweet gesture, I must say. Quite simply put, if you are a teacher or administrator and have attended a professional development session at some point in the last few years, the odds are pretty damn high that you have probably had to sit through a presentation on Paynes’ dubious Framework for Understanding Poverty.
For a less polemic, highly articulate, quite accessible, and pleasantly substantive critique of Payne, please see this recent article written by Paul Gorski and published in the Winter 2006-2007 issue of Rethinking Schools. I encourage all of you to pass Gorski' article along to any educator within your reach. The proliferation and acceptance of Payne’s shite must end!
-Herschel
