Tyson’s Corner

Well, now I’ve seen Gorski with my own eyes and realized that he’s just an ordinary person, although his ideas are anything but ordinary. I enjoyed his workshop, and am thankful to Kara for initiating contact with him and making his visit possible. His “Class and Poverty Awareness Quiz” was a good way to begin his presentation, and his illustration of the distribution of the world’s wealth was an eye-opener to the inequities that exist. I like this quote from his article “The Question of Class” in Teaching Tolerance Magazine: “There is no more a single culture of poverty than there is a single culture of woman-ness or of African American-ness” (p. 3). His way of looking at poverty makes more sense to me than that of Ruby Payne, yet I wonder if he would have spoken so vigorously in favor of the poor if it weren’t for Payne’s work. Gorski has much to say that is valuable and of its own merit, and he speaks so passionately about the need to look beyond class distinctions, so I cannot understand why he spends so much of his time and energy focusing on Payne. I’m left with a feeling of unease as to his motives, yet embracing his ideas.