The
Pedagogy of Poverty versus Good Teaching
By
Martin Haberman
The
title of the article is the pedagogy of poverty versus good teaching that is
written by Martin Haberman. Martin Haberman is a professor of curriculum and
instruction at the University of Wiskonsin, Milwaukee. Firstly, he earning his
master’s and a doctorate in teacher education from teacher collage, Columbia
University, he came to UWM in 1962.Mr. He has been awarded honorary doctorates of Humane letters
from Rhode island collage and the states university of new York. Forty six
years later, Haberman is still working to improve teaching in urban schools.
This is third article before teaching
Behaviors. This article discusses 5 main points, namely the pedagogy of
poverty (the function of urban teaching), reform and the pedagogy of poverty,
the nature of urban children and youth, good teaching and the rewards of not
changing. The purpose of his article is analyzing the main issue of teacher’s
act both of strategy and knowledge in class that is categorizing as good
teacher or it has pedagogy of poverty.
Martin
Haberman begins his article by stating that what is the function of urban
teaching? Where, this point is analyzing teachers act and knowledge that could
give standard or high level in learning through of their teaching. This article
also focused in urban teaching. He said that there are fourteen the core
functions of urban teaching, namely: giving information, asking question,
giving direction, making assignments, giving test, reviewing test, assigning
homework, reviewing homework, settling disputes, punishing noncompliance,
marking paper and giving grades. Teaching is what teachers do. Learning is what
student do. The second point is reform and the pedagogy o poverty. Pedagogy o
poverty is not successful to implicate it in urban school. Because, it is just
a theory that will make student bored and does not care about it. However, it
could success if we used it with more practice than theory. Therefore, student
and teachers are engaged in different activities. The third point is the nature
of urban children and youth. Where, Teacher are in charge and responsible.
Students are those who still need to develop appropriate behavior. When
students follow teacher’s direction, appropriate behavior is being taught and
learned. The fourth and fifth point is good teaching and the rewards not
changes. Good teaching is what we do in class such as our strategies, our
behaviors in class and how to manage the class time. So, it is more focused to
teachers act in class. However, in some schools this point is so difficult to
change. Especially, teacher’s strategies and their characters that always bring
and related with school business and family. The all of functions above are
describing as making up the general impression of what people think about
teaching. Teachers often come into the profession disillusioned with their good
intentions and will get burnt out by constantly having to be a direct
authoritarian. There is a main different between what teaches think the job
will be versus what it actually requires. The current set up allow student to
succeed without becoming too involved and thoughtful if the teaching style
based on the fourteen basic characteristics. The teacher whose describe their
students can change but they need two things namely: the whole school faculty
and school community to be the unit of change and they must be persistent and
patient because there will be resistance to change. Teacher is misled to
believe they have control in their classroom and often urban teachers are
punished if they cannot elicit compliance from their students. Good teaching is
the creation of good learning environment which should develop the students
understanding of human differences.
The
author’s article is good for reading. However, he does not give an example of
the real object of his article. Seems like, it explained urban teaching in
generally. From the all of characteristics above I was quite frankly confused.
How is that anything other than just plain teaching? My view of teachers and
teaching has always included those activities. How do you teach without things
like monitoring, testing, grading and etcetera? How can teacher, parents, and
community except anything differently? Is it possible to describe a teaching
approach that can serve as an alternative to the pedagogy of poverty? Why are
there rich people and poor people, able and disable, urban and rural, multilingual
and monolingual, highly educated and poorly educated? Not only that, what
strategy that have to apply in some of cases when students ask teacher” Hei
sir, you are so smart how can we become like you? So, is the teacher just say
read and read? It is so simple. I think he/she must give a strategy that could
build their character in the future. But, how they would say it to them? Not
only that, he also explained that teacher as a responsible guidance. It makes me confused. How about the teacher
has high pedagogy and good teaching but she/he instruction the students in
insult valley? The writer has to compare the positive case and negative case to
know is it can categorize as a good teacher or not?
From
the all of explanation article above, it concludes that the author is preaching
for reform and a new system for teaching urban students. One thing that can
categorize as main point is making people instead of just getting them through
high school or helping the pass GED (General Education Development) because
there is so much more education then just passing. Students also need to learn
how to be a part of society and have more than just the basic skill.
