For years I’ve worked with teens and adults and gotten a
deeper insight into social class, poverty and poor vs. successful/working
(rich) thinking. I try to answer these questions with new observations or
insights.
Recently an insubordinate employee got fired.
He initially presented well………ok, I thought a grown man
carrying a Louis Vuitton bag was suspicious but I just watched. I normally
didn’t have much contact with him so it was mainly through others I got a
picture of him. He made it a point to access lots of buildings on campus, to
use his position to access way too much. This lead to a video of him going into
offices. For candy. It was silly and he got a talking to and sent home for the
day. He was security after all.
Then word got around the office that he was “pushy”,
demanding, commanding, directing—-from the lowest rung on the totem pole.
Educated, experienced, older people were not amused.
He made a pushy move on my department and I was like—-No.
He was pissed at the No. And in talking to him, he was younger, I tried to
explain why I was saying No and also suggest that he think about his
motivations. His way wasn’t working, he was garnering a reputation, a bad one
amongst people who are clannish about their departments and such.
He would speak over me to the pint, where I directly asked
him: May I speak now?
Oddly, I remember looking at his mouth because he couldn’t
stop talking as I was talking calmly to him. It was like talking was set to
Reply in him but not absorb and consider.
Finally, I suggested to him that others had run through the
company with much the same attitude, the ones who’d been fired. But I
encouraged him not to listen to my suggestion of change, to continue his
methodology because I enjoyed being proven right after I told someone/observed
someone doing something incorrectly. It’s a predictive analysis game I play
with myself, less about ego and more about seeing, observing actions and such
cleanly, closely, dispassionately.
That was a Monday. He gets into a huge fight with another
Supervisor on Saturday. I and yet a third Supervisor have to get involved to separate
them and send the guy home, again for public, rank, horrid insubordination.
He’s fired that Monday.
6 Days!—-the scoring of my predictive analysis.
He, however, lives in the Bronx, his wife is unemployed,
they’re half on Welfare and though he got another job soon afterward, they are
constantly experiencing one of the tsunamis of poverty—-chronic, intermittent
employment and firing. A longer, probing discussion with him would surely
illicit that some of his egotistical pushings was from trying to get ahead and
never feeling like he/they do. He’s running in place though he might have just
enough extra smarts to see/know it doesn’t have to be that way. He hasn’t
learned the behavioral amendments and adjustments that those of us in Middle
Class or Higher have mastered.
What Are COGNITIVE STRATEGIES?
Three categories:
1.
INPUT-Quantity and quality of data
gathered (PreK to 6th Grade)
·
Use planning behaviors.
·
Focus perception on a specific stimuli.
·
Control impulsivity.
·
Explore data systematically.
·
Use appropriate and accurate labels.
·
Organize space using stable systems of reference.
·
Orient data in time.
·
Identify constancies across variations.
·
Gather precise and accurate data.
·
Consider two sources of information at once.
·
Organize data (parts of a whole.)
·
Visually transport data.
2. ELABORATION-Efficient use of the data (5th Grade
to 9th Grade)
·
Identify and define the problem.
·
Select relevant cues.
·
Compare data.
·
Select appropriate categories of time. .
·
Summarize data.
·
Project relationship of data.
·
Use logical data.
·
Test hypothesis.
·
Build inferences.
·
Make a plan using the data.
·
Use appropriate labels.
·
Use data systematically.
3. OUTPUT-Communication of Elaboration and Input
(&th Grade Through 12 grade/college)
·
Communicate clearly the labels and processes.
·
Visually transport data correctly.
·
Use precise and accurate language.
·
Control impulsive behavior.
The Cognitive Strategies of The Poor
Folk are like what happened? And I thought about him—-what
I noticed, which is why I went beyond just a supervisory-level No to his
demand/request was that he exampled higher cognitive capabilities than his
station in work/life. We’re all intelligent—-possessing consciousness. But some
people are also smart. Smart being a measurement of cognitive speed, ability,
capability, potentiality. That’s a lot of where I focus my work now in
education and teaching: development, high performance. I make this point
because of the emotional draining I felt in trying to help “poor people”.
One of the ways people in poverty operate in their
community context—-is through relationships. Relationships are paramount in
poverty because resources are scarce. One of the few ways to develop
relationships is through sexual attractiveness, sexual prowess, ability to
fight and —-extreme verbiage.
The smartest poor people I’ve met, literally won’t/can’t
shut the fuck up. All you want to scream at them is to shut the fuck up.
Because relationships in poverty are built on communication
but there isn’t a robust intellectual gymnasium of concepts, ideas, books,
theories—-that Smart Ability has nowhere to develop but in the spaces of
language, communication, to relationships
The poor and potentially smart become verbal delugers. Also
because in poverty this tends to work.
Imagine a scene where our Smart Guy is in his poor
neighborhood and trying to get something—-attention, affection, food,
money—-and he has this underdeveloped but overly expansive verbiage ability
that he can use to overwhelm the others around him with. Because they might not
be as smart and therefore haven’t developed verbiage, they are overwhelmed and
he wins whatever it is he’s trying to gain. This happens from childhood to
adulthood. He then gets a job where he’s alongside but not
within corporate (Middle Class, Upper, Rich, Wealthy) structures. As a human,
he will use his Strengths, resources, potentiality but it’s not refined.
And it’s focused at people of higher capacity (smarts) so
all that verbiage is understood but deflectable. In poverty,
it might not be completely understood nor deflectable by the target.
What many (verbiage) smart poor people run into in the real
(multi-classed) world is that their superpowers are annoying, useless or even
detrimental because they aren’t refined (which is what education does—-it refines human
beings, while also filling them with information and it also
passively, teaches structure—-I’ll get to that in a minute....)
He couldn’t hear me because he couldn’t shut off his
superpower because he’d never worked with Professor X to become a refined
X-Man. What I was thinking of him, he’d mentioned reading books, was to gently
inquire about his educational interests and perhaps steer him successfully (as
I have several other security guards) towards college.
But he wouldn’t shut the fuck up.
In not shutting up he pushed away absorbing anything of
relevance to his environment. He was operating solely on his impressions,
motivations and when someone (me) suggested he was driving towards a cliff
edge—-he dismissed me and…went over the cliff’s edge.
Listening I would offer you, is a form of structure. You
have to segment yourself, your thoughts from verbalization—-set them aside and
then ingest, consider the new, perhaps contrary information coming in. I think
the fact that it’s contrary is where poverty thinking rebels. If we seek like
and patterns and such then if you’re not taught that reality also contains
differences, changes, and challenges, you will only internalize like/agreement.
Amazingly enough a few weeks later a maintenance lady came
into the cafeteria and asked me what had happened to him, she’d heard he’d been
fired. She then relayed that he had approached her a few weeks into working,
trying to get work info to help his wife get employed. She explained what she
was trying to explain to him about the hiring process—-and then she pointed out
how he wouldn’t listen to her, she explained how she’d tried several times, and
ways, but he rebuffed hearing what she was trying to explain. It didn’t
surprise me that she so clearly defined what I’d seen because of her education
level but because of it so paralleling what I thought and felt in communicating
with him. She’d distinctly experienced it to and could articulate it.
Which spiraled me into thinking and asking how she was
seeing this/experiencing this from him. Now curiously she presented
that it was because he was Dominican. (She’s Panamanian.) That sort of sullied
her mental waters to my analysis because of bias/soft racism but I allowed that
perhaps there is a cultural propensity that age and cultural perspective has
allowed her to see that I have not.
Like I said before I’ve moved in my Generalist work in
Education to more Specialist in how to identify and develop Gifted Students,
I’m no longer interested, as I joke, in being the $35k a year social worker who
dies in the church basement teaching people how to write their names. I see not
only the need but am now working on the means/developmental materials to
accelerate adults who have Cognitive Deficiencies, some created by poverty.
Where does the Guard who was fired fall/fail?
Here’s where I heard his lack.
INPUT-Quantity and quality of data gathered
·
Use planning behaviors.
·
Focus perception on specific stimulus.
ELABORATION-Efficient use of the data
·
Compare data.
·
Summarize data.
·
Project relationship of data.
·
Use logical data.
·
Test hypothesis.
·
Build inferences.
·
Make a plan using the data.
OUTPUT-Communication of Elaboration and Input
·
Control impulsive behavior.
I would surmise that he missed out on Focusing
perception on specific stimuli in PreK to 5th Grade. When I teach this
to students to either do evaluations or to evaluate themselves and see what
we’re trying to fill in—-I explain each Strategy/Functionality as a Bucket.
The guard’s Bucket of Focus perception on specific
stimulus was not properly “filled” therefore the next levels of
supportive reactive buckets have not been properly “filled”.
That’s what the mentality/mindset difference is between the
Poor and the Rich. The Rich get all of their Cognitive buckets well filled and
even work on further developing them. Poverty then intellectually is a result
of deprivation and teaching of these Strategies. There’s, of course, systemic
and resource-based reasons for poverty, at least 12 dimensions, 11 besides
money.
Does My Work Work?
As an aside to how do results shake out when someone like
me has classes, students and can infuse to specific buckets or fix them? The
national statistic of Poverty to Middle class or higher movement is 18% of poor
people will shift in their lifetimes. In my classes and work, I would say I’m
batting a strong 80% shift. But one, it’s a voluntary class system that people
come into where I’ve been—-so those are the people who want change—-and two,
I’m able to distinctly and deliberately identify where what and how to change them.
Sometimes my students call me Professor X so I’ve run with
the analogy with them but it’s not far off—-it is like trying to reform someone
or refine them because you can see their raw potential has greater
possibilities. The challenge to 100% success is the person and their
surrounding reality may not see that possibility as possible or desirable.
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
https://amzn.to/47HYHgl
Mark Howe
· 3y
Some
people don't seem to have any listening skills. I’ve a friend who tends to
yammer at people 24/7. Recently she's started adult education and now that she's
seen a glimpse of all the stuff she's been missing she's gone into overdrive
and lectures people about the stuff she's learned even though we knew it 20
years ago. I’m proud of her but it's painful at times and I can't decide
whether the her ‘preaching to the choir’ lectures are worse than the
non-sensical yammering . . .:)
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