Clatsop Community College
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 1, 2006
Contact: Charlotte DeWitt, 503-338-2311
Margaret Frimoth, 503-338-2378

Clatsop Community College Faculty and Staff Explore Issues of Generational Poverty

On Wednesday, June 31, Dr. Donna Beegle, nationally renowned expert on generational poverty, conducted a workshop on what it means to come from the crisis of poverty and go to school in America. CCC’s Plus and Lives in Transition Programs sponsored the workshop to help college faculty and staff better serve students who have grown up in generational poverty situations.

Individuals who have grown up in generational poverty are distinguished from individuals who have experienced situational poverty by, among other things, the fact that their families have never experienced the stability of land ownership or secure employment. Their primary focus, by necessity, is on securing the basic physical necessities of life for themselves and their families. Finally, they have no role-models of persons who have improved their lives through education. For individuals living within generational poverty, their only personal contact with the middle-class comes through formal, but not social contact with educators, law enforcement, social services workers, and, occasionally, healthcare providers.

Beegle also pointed out that American society is unique in that poverty is viewed as a personal deficiency for which the individual within poverty is somehow to blame, whereas in other societies it is recognized that economic and other systems failures are to blame for poverty. It is the internalization of this notion of personal deficiency that erodes hope and the belief in possibilities among Americans in generational poverty that makes educational success a more difficult achievement for them than for immigrants from other poverty societies.

Dr. Beegle illustrated her presentation with her own experiences of growing up in generational poverty in Oregon, leaving school for marriage at 15, giving birth to eight children, only three of whom survived to adulthood, and eventually earning her way from G.E.D. to Ph.D while becoming a nationally known expert on poverty.

From both her own experiences and her research, Dr. Beegle shared with workshop participants that there are distinctive norms that distinguish middle class culture and generational poverty culture that present unique challenges and opportunities for educators. For instance, the middle-class is generally a print culture, according to Dr. Beegle, while generational poverty is an oral culture.

Because relationship is more important than anything else in oral culture, personal identification with educators or someone who has benefited from education is a critical factor in the motivation of students from generational poverty.

In oral culture, communication style also differs from print culture communication. It is normal to interrupt, to have multiple conversations and to focus on lots of ideas at once, to show emotion, to be physically expressive, to share personal experiences, and to tell the same story repeatedly as a way of learning and understanding. When individuals within an oral culture need information, they ask another person.

In print culture, on the other hand, when an individual needs information, they tend to look for a book or written information on the subject. They also like things in order, they approach tasks by breaking them into parts, and are most comfortable focusing on one idea at a time. Print culture individuals are less emotionally demonstrative, and do not tend to share personal stories as a way of teaching or gaining understanding of how the world works.

Beegle shared a variety of methods for educators to value and teach all their student skills from both these cultures in order to help generational poverty students succeed and to help all students obtain a balance of these cultural skills in their own lives.
To learn more about Dr. Beegle’s work, visit www.combarriers.com.