Reflections

head, panicking, he began to move his arms and legs as he had seen other boys do. Eventually, Yong found that he could keep his head above water. When he surfaced, he was startled to hear his father yelling and see him gesticulating angrily from the bank. Guang Ming was a man of calm demeanor; it was rare to see him so worked up. When the yelling didn’t work, Yong’s father resorted to throwing small stones in the water near his son, an attempt to force him to the shore. Frightened by his father’s unprecedented behavior, Yong dodged the stones and stayed in the water. After a while, his father gave up and stomped away, exasperated.

When Yong was sure his father had left, he climbed out of the pond. Too scared to go home, he hid in a rice field until one of his sisters came calling for him and persuaded him to come home and face the music. This was the only time Yong remembers his father spanking him. The spanking was perfunctory because, by chance, one of his uncles was visiting. In the end, Yong decided the crime was worth the punishment. As an adult, Yong came to understand that his father was reacting from fear of the water—unable to swim, Guang Ming worried the water would rob him of his firstborn son.

Though Yong’s curiosity and rebellious nature led him into occasional trouble in his youth, they also served as assets. The absence of rules freed Yong to explore, learn from experience, and test out his ideas. Later in life, Yong would cite this absence of rules and restrictions as enabling him to trust his instincts and disregard rules when they got in the way of his plans—factors that contributed to his success.

Given the details of Yong’s earliest environment, few people would predict he would become an internationally recognized scholar. What factors in his early life set the boy from Sichuan Province on the path to becoming a global citizen?

Reflecting on his childhood, Yong feels that what most people regard as disadvantages he was able to harness as assets. He doesn’t see his story as a conventional tale of a heroic individual drawing on reserves of grit and determination to overcome great odds. Rather, he sees his circumstances, weaknesses, and constraints as being advantageous. His village may have been remote and poor, but that also meant he faced no expectations or social pressures, allowing him to pursue his own interests. His father, Guang Ming, may have been an illiterate peasant, but his fellow villagers’ resignation to the bleak status quo opened up opportunities for him to devise entrepreneurial ventures. Watching his father find opportunities that others overlooked encouraged Yong to do the same: to exploit rather than submissively accept his circumstances. He may have had few toys and limited information about the outside world, but this allowed his curiosity and imagination to flourish. His family was unable to provide him with activities that urban children enjoyed, leaving Yong free to wander, explore, and daydream as he pleased.

Our intent is not to glorify poverty. Poverty has multiple devastating effects on children.38 Persistent poverty can dramatically reduce opportunities for social and economic mobility as well as cause debilitating, chronic health problems.39 All societies benefit from efforts to reduce poverty and to provide extra support for children of low-income families. Governments should institute policies to reduce poverty, improve health, and increase access to powerful knowledge and skills for children from low-income homes. Even in straitened circumstances, parents and educators can find ways to support these children in the classroom. By adopting asset thinking and committing to heart-centered learning, teachers can create a dynamic environment for all students to maximize their potential.

In Equitable Instruction, Empowered Students, educator Carissa McCray contrasts deficit thinking that focuses on what student lack

with an asset model in which educators identify and seek to build on the assets students possess:

Deficit thinking shows up in the way teachers focus on what students do not have, what they cannot do, and how far behind they are rather than drawing on what students do have that can drive success. Equitable teaching disrupts a deficit model and embraces an asset model.40

Asset-based education is not to be confused with high expectations. The absence of high expectations for a child’s future may, on first consideration, appear to be a handicap. Shouldn’t parents be encouraging their children to “reach for the stars”? This may work for some children. In other cases, however, parental expectations can be a burden.41 However, this is not the primary narrative that parents or teachers typically hear. Evidence suggests that students’ aspirations for their future—one of the assets they bring with them—are more closely associated with their actual achievement than parents’ expectations.42 More accurately, each student appears to have a sweet spot where their aspirations and expectations from parents and teachers converge in a supportive context.43

Educational rhetoric and policies in the United States and across the globe encourage parents and educators to hold high expectations for students as a way to boost achievement.44 The belief is that holding high expectations for children from low-income communities will help them improve academic performance. This belief has found its way into a range of policy vehicles including curriculum standards, standardized testing, and grade retention. Holding high expectations alone is not enough; it must be paired with a caring environment if students are to reap the benefits.45

In addition to holding high expectations for students, parents and teachers must build strong, healthy relationships with them to promote a sense of belonging in the classroom. In Mindful School

Communities, Christine Mason, Michele Rivers Murphy, and Yvette Jackson note that:

Humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers believed that in order for individuals to grow, they need an environment that provides positive relationships and interactions with healthy personalities, along with genuineness (openness and self-disclosure), acceptance (being viewed with unconditional positive regard or love), and empathy (being listened to and understood).46

Yong’s story illustrates the benefits of belonging and connectedness. His family loved and supported him within their extremely limited means. They accepted uncritically that he was unlikely to succeed as a farmer like his father and the other men in the village. They trusted that Yong could find his own path. Moreover, unlike families in wealthier urban areas, Yong’s family felt no social pressure to ensure their children excelled academically and pursued a high-status profession. Without external expectations for who he should be or what he should do or become, Yong was free to explore and imagine. Unburdened by expectations, he experienced his family’s unconditional love and support, enabling him to explore, cultivate, and express his own nature.