Many of my at-risk students struggle with issues stemming from poverty and race. But abusive wealth and privilege can be equally harmful.
I team-teach a class of high school boys who have been labeled “at-risk.”
When people ask questions about the term, a bias often emerges that assumes the boys struggle with issues stemming from poverty and race.
The second column in this series drew a comment from a reader who suggested the boys’ self-esteem suffered the effects of low income and ethnicity, side-stepping the fact that the “Lonely Boy” highlighted was an affluent Caucasian.
It is true that boys of color have come through this program who lived unspeakable lives of poverty. One teen had lived in a car with his family for three years. I had a student who slept in the airport every night to get away from the meth in his home. I had a boy so full of self-hate that he told me being black was his curse in life.
However, I want to make it abundantly clear that abusive wealth and privilege is an equal component of the mysterious mix that puts a youngster at risk.
I have written of Thomas, whose sense of entitlement evoked a pompous statement about hiring good lawyers to get out of trouble, and Jonathan, whose home life in a six-bedroom chalet was a nightmare.
Meet Robert, a 16-year-old who came to school when he felt like it and said he didn’t need a degree because his father was going to bring him into the family business when he turned 18.
♦◊♦
Robert wasn’t passing any of his classes. His parents told the counselor that he could catch up in summer school, as he had done since the seventh grade.
When Robert did come to school—with excuse notes written by his mother blaming the “sniffles”—he passively disrupted classes with petty thefts, whispered epithets, and artistic renderings of sexual organs.
I asked him why he hated school so much.
He said: “Oh, there are some things I like about school. I like it when I get my teachers fired.”
“Oh, you’re the one who does that?” I joked.
“Talk to my middle school teachers, you’ll see,” Robert replied, and leaned back in his desk with a smugness that made the other boys look for a response from me, but I have developed a poker face for moments just like this one.
Robert had advised the group on a few occasions that he was aware no one liked him.
The principal commented once: “Do you ever think you go out of your way to be unlikable?”
“I don’t care. I could buy everyone in this room,” Robert replied.
“With your daddy’s money,” Sadique said.
“No. It’s my money. My parents do whatever I say.”
Robert was completely serious when he said this, and I thought: “How much more at-risk can you get?”
♦◊♦
Since the teenage anthem “I don’t care” speaks ironic volumes, the teaching team decided Robert needed to recognize how much he really did care. So I made him the leader in a game called “Trip Trick.”
I found Robert before classes started the next day and asked him to be our “shill” in the game. I told him what to do when I called on him, stressing that the key to solving the puzzle was to observe the body language of the speaker. Unless, the respondent brushed his hand through his hair, he couldn’t go anywhere. “Play along with me,” I said.
When I instructed the class about the rules, I only told them to try to figure out the formula that allowed one to go on a trip.
In the beginning, I deliberately misled them:
“I’m going on a trip to Alaska. I’m bringing my best friend Albert and”—I casually brushed my hair back as if thinking—”some aspirin.”
“I got you. I got you,” Estevan said. “I’m going to Alaska and I’m bringing my best friend Arthur and some apples. Take that, y’all!”
Estevan slapped the desk and started to join me up front.
“Well, you aren’t going on that trip.” I replied.
“You kiddin’ me? Whaaaaat? I said ‘Alaska, Arthur, and apples,’ right? You heard me, right?”
“Yes, that’s right … but oh so wrong,” I said, smiling.
Meanwhile, Robert was bursting with conspiracy in the back of the room.
“I’ll try another one. Now pay attention,” I said. “I’m going to Michigan. (hands combed through hair) with my dog, and I’m bringing a laptop.”
A collective “Huhhhhh?” resounded throughout the room, so I composed a few more unrelated adventures finally suggesting Robert give it a try.
Robert performed his part with great flourish, smoothing back his hair before he began: “I’m taking a really awesome yacht, and I’m going to Dubai with a babe.”
I offered a dramatic pause, just enough so everyone thought Robert was about to be shot down, until I said with game-show gusto: “Then come on down. You’re goin’ to Dubai!”
Robert came to the front with self-awarded fanfare that psyched up the others to find the key to winning an imaginary trip for themselves.
They loved the game. Those who realized the trick were filled with confidence. They ran to join us, arguing about who was going to give the trip information next.
The principal, who wasn’t in on the trick, happened to be among those still seated. He was losing with a smile on his face, but that wasn’t where he was comfortable. In a third attempt, the principal repeated the exact answer recently awarded a trip, but he failed to touch his hair.
The group at the front guffawed and pointed, loving how wrong he was.
The boys in the seats defended him.
“How come?” One of them demanded. “What’s wrong with that answer? You can’t say that’s wrong. This is so unfair. Man, he was not wrong. Wow. You guys are cheating big-time.”
But Estevan, who had been sitting there in determined concentration, said: “I got it. I got it.”
He repeated the principal’s exact words and rubbed his hair before combing it straight up with his fingers.
♦◊♦
I let the trip-takers tell the three remaining in their seats what the trick was. The victors bragged about their skills, pounding their chests and strutting around before taking their seats.
The discussion centered on acceptance and rejection, involvement and passivity, the bonds shared through victory and loss, as well as observation skills. It ended with a discussion of knowledge and power.
I asked: “Who holds the most power in this room?”
Without exception they pointed to the principal.
“Then why couldn’t he figure out the answer to this puzzle?”
They shouted responses and I cut them off.
“Wait a minute. Which player held the most power in the game?”
Unanimously they said Robert.
“What did he have that the principal didn’t?” I asked.
And everyone knew what it was: “The answer.”
Sometimes, teachers just throw the lesson out there. I’ll probably never know if Robert absorbed the empowerment of information. He transferred to an alternative high school when he came of age and earned an equivalency diploma. I can only hope someday in his father’s company, he remembers what it felt like to hold the key to inspiring others to run up along side of him in a collaborative journey toward success.
—Photo kawwsu29
Interesting piece, Suzanne. I wish there was an easy answer. Maybe we all – parents and children alike – need to go to humanity classes each week to learn how to be compassionate, caring people.
Or maybe socialism is the answer.
One of my nieces used to work at a really up-scale summer boarding camp in northeaster Pennsylvania.
Most of her charges came there from boarding school after only a short time with the folks, if any.
They knew they were being avoided and acted out accordingly.
Y’know, there’s a possibility that the lesson he’ll learn from that excercize is “being an insider and having privileged information is good”.
Just sayin’.
You’re absolutely right.
Thank you all for your comments. I suppose the main point of why I do this is because we all – whoever we are or wherever we come from – face a tipping point in adolescence. I sure know I did. MIddle-class and fatherless on the brink of my teenage years, I fell through many a hole. I got a hand up, so I’m extending one. Laura, I have spent a while thinking about ‘smug’ – a look I was frequently told to get off my face by nuns. When I see it glaring back at me from kids today,… Read more »
I’m not sure how porn and violence entered this discussion, but I agree with Anonymous Male that the kids who are impoverished will never throw that off like Robert and his peers might of their mantle of wealth. I also recall the psychologist, Michael Thompson, I think his name is, addressing a group of parents out here at a school one night. He spoke about a boy at the Belmont School. It was a sad cliche: incredibly wealthy parents who neglected this only child who was screaming for help and love. I wonder though, if we use the word “smug”… Read more »
I expect Robert’s father is going to be disappointed.
As the Brits used to say, “clogs to clogs in three generations”, clogs being a kind of wooden sandal the poor used for work.
I’m not trying to engage in any class warfare here, I know that affluent people can be just as tortured as poor people, but if you’re asking for my sympathy for those who are from wealthier families, it’s hard for me to mobilize a lot of feeling. I see one crucial, central, difference, at least once they become independent adults. If they wanted to, they could spend their way out of it by becoming poor, but poor people can’t just give away all their poverty. Their parents have options – give them lots of money or not give them lots… Read more »
I agree with you on this one. The at risk guy with delusions of grandeur (he thinks his parents are under his control) can have a flash of insight, and has the money to get the counseling he needs so he can effectively act on that insight. If , in his stupidity, he gets into trouble with the law, he can afford a good lawyer and is far less likely to serve a long sentence. Wealth buys you the ability to learn from your mistakes and have a second (third, fourth, fifth) chance. That’s why we use the term *at… Read more »
i see this when I talk to boys about GMP. Whether it is Epiphany School where many do not have dads or Belmont Hill, the most privileged private school for boys in Boston, all are subject to the same onslaught of images of men as porn and violence beasts with no one talking to them about the truth of manhood.
I do not think porn and violent images cause people to behave as Robert does or, hopefully, did. It is home life and whatever relationship he had with his parents that created that level of nonchalant arrogance. That arrogance might prevent people like Robert from realizing the purpose of Rosenwasser’s game.
But you can’t argue that it doesn’t have some affect on people, porn and violent video games and violence in general. When I was a little girl, my brother ruthlessly abused me, and now looking back on it, I realized just what it was: WWE wrestling. Whenever he watched that program and learned a new move, he’d try it on me. Of course, he was a kid back then, and my parents never knew what he was doing because I never told them. I was too afraid. I suppose my parents just assumed my brother would listen to them and… Read more »
It isn’t WWE wrestling that caused this, it was only a vehicle for his violence. A sort of “how-to” guide, amongst many. It didn’t, and couldn’t, provide the *motivation* for said violence. His understanding of the world was his motivation. He might have not meant to hurt you (I’d pretend-fight when young too, never for real, with siblings and my father), or maybe he did…but wrestling was only the vehicle he thought was appropriate. I played hundreds of violent videogames (much of them are, even kids game like Kirby or Mario 64), I watched hundreds of action, horror and thriller… Read more »