Introduction

“We must, above all else, commit to losing the stereotypes that paint poor people as the problem. That might be the single most important thing that any of us, as educators, can do in our commitments to equity and diversity.” Paul Gorski, 2013

As we turn our focus of inquiry to an in-depth discussion of poverty and income inequality in Canada, and their effects on children, families, teachers, schools, and schooling practices, there are two points that need to be foregrounded for the remainder of this discussion. The first is that poverty and income inequality, and particularly the negative effects of income inequality, are inextricably connected to the systemic effects of oppressions such as racism, the challenges of disabilities, and sexism. That is, people do not “happen” to be poor or more financially comfortable: levels of income are deeply connected to the ways in which people are able (or not) to access the material goods and services (including schooling) that affect greater or lesser degrees of financial prosperity.

The second point which underscores this book is to remind ourselves that, as Jonathan Katz and others have pointed out for more than twenty years, when we talk about any social category (also referred to throughout this book as identity categories), there is always a “default position”, which is always the position of privilege. As critical thinkers, we must include in any analysis of the systemic operations of discrimination, the effects also of privilege; to focus only on the communities that are often cast as “Other” is to leave the position of privilege unexamined and therefore held up as that to which, it is assumed, all will – or should – aspire.

In this book, where we focus our inquiry on the effects particularly of income inequality, we need to be aware of the notion that Canada is a classless society, and bring that idea to the forefront to refute it. While it is the case that Canada does not officially operate with a strict system of class differentiation, there are myriad ways in which the language of a class system, and the operations of a class system, are readily seen and able to be recognized as such when we start to look closely. While this is true in many social spaces, it is particularly true in schooling practices and policies, in curriculum documents, and in many of the everyday practices and assumptions with which schools and teachers make decisions about and for students (which is one of the primary areas of inquiry in this book).

We discuss some of the ways in which income inequality affects students in Canadian schools; some of the ways in which particular communities and students are more negatively impacted by lower incomes in their families and communities; some of the ways in which many curriculum decisions and school policies and practices rest on explicitly middle-class assumptions and values; and how we as educators can work toward undoing these negative effects for students. Additionally, we briefly outline the Low Income Cut-Off (LICO) which is the actual, official determination of whether or not one is considered to be “poor” in Canada.

We also walk readers through an in-depth exercise we call the Budget Exercise, which was first developed by Dr. Leighteizer about twenty years ago, and has been used by both of us subsequently in our classrooms. While a much earlier version of this exercise was published in Module 8, “Schooling and Social Justice,” of the former Nova Scotia Educational Leadership Consortium’s program for instructional leaders in this province (2002), it is an evolving document, which has been refined and modified for this book, and which will continue to evolve as wages change. We also note here that as wages and costs of living vary amongst provinces and territories, we use Nova Scotia wages that are current at the time of this writing (2022). There are components added to the Budget Exercise which can also be undertaken, such as Grocery Shopping on a Budget, 24/7 Schedule, and Back to School Shopping, but if not completed do not affect the Budget Exercise itself.

While conceptualizing this book, and thinking more deeply about schooling and issues of social class and income levels (and inequalities), we begin with the words of Jane van Galen, Professor of Education at the University of Washington, and echo her line of inquiry: “On the one hand, we believe that school can enable all motivated young people to attain the …dream of self-directed success. On the other hand, we tend to avoid questioning why so many hard-working families have found success elusive in the first place” (2007, p. 156).

While schooling practices and processes have been, and continue to be hailed as “the great leveler” (World Bank, 2021), abundant research indicates the complex and myriad ways in which this is simply not true. Black students and Indigenous students are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school for behaviours that are viewed as individual problematic behaviours, rather than the result of forms of systemic oppression that give rise to resistance, challenges of teachers and administration, refusal to take up content that is not reflective or is negatively representative of their lives and communities (see for instance: George Sefa Dei, Agnes Calliste, Carl James, Baruti Kafele, Robyn Maynard, Pamela Rose Toulouse, Enid Lee, Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, and many others).