July 2, 2025

Learning to See People Part 2- Being Curious- Not Judgmental

Case study: Seeing the Poor

I’m an autistic relationships teacher with an intense interest in people and let me tell you people are weird. 

See my post introducing myself and this series here 

Let’s take a look at a group that, for the most part, has always been invisible: the poor. There are some important lessons to be learned from this. It’s also a group I can identify with, being a high school teacher with a family of eight. 

Learning to really see people takes some real effort. If you aren’t making the effort, then I guarantee you, you aren’t really seeing people. It doesn’t come naturally to anyone. People are complicated, and our brains don’t have the time and energy to see people accurately. To save energy, the brain automatically takes some massive shortcuts, giving you an oversimplified version of someone at best and a completely wrong version at worst, all the while hiding the truth from you. These shortcuts are called biases and stereotypes, and there is a reason why having an autistic be your guide on these things is a good thing. 

There is some research that shows, on average, the autistic brain takes fewer of these shortcuts and that an autistic brain is processing 40% more information while at rest. This is good for seeing, but can have some drawbacks. There is a reason why your autistic friends get exhausted much more frequently. 

The best way to overcome our shortcuts is to be curious. When you are curious, you are willing to look at discrepancies and things that don’t match up with your incorrect ideas. Every school year, I have 150 new students or so, and I’m incredibly curious about all of them. You’ve probably heard of special interests. Well, my special interest is people. I’m intensely curious about my students. When they walk in, I start to study them like a Star Wars movie (another special interest). 

Let’s take a look at a group that, for the most part, has always been invisible: the poor. 

When they are seen, it’s almost always overgeneralized and in many ways completely wrong. 

You can learn to see clearly if you can see when you are wrong. This is more difficult than you might think because your brain really, really doesn’t want to see this and will push you away from this: 

So, back to the poor: A lot of people have completely wrong ideas about the poor, and there is evidence all around them of how completely wrong they are, but they just don’t see it. 

It usually starts with some overgeneralized pattern recognition that goes like this:

The way to make money is through hard work -> If you don’t have money, you aren’t working hard -> the poor are lazy

You might even be able to call up people that you’ve run into that seem to be poor as a result of their laziness, so -> case closed

The problem is that there are examples EVERYWHERE of this being wrong, and yet if you are like most people, then this will be almost totally invisible to you.

For some of you, just me saying that there are examples everywhere, maybe something you are having a hard time computing. Some of you might have already checked out of reading any further. This is something I discovered in teaching. Teaching connects you to a wide cross-section of society in a way that no other job does, but I’ve had many, many students who come from poor families. As I’ve studied these kids and their families, I’ve noticed that the stereotypes are completely wrong. 

Now, if you are an avid people watcher like me, this is absolutely fascinating. Watching people being completely blind to what is everywhere around us, and this makes me curious. 

Yes I’m curious about people not being curious (yes weird) 

The problem is our brain refuses to look at stuff that proves us wrong. It’s like it doesn’t even exist. It’s the weirdest thing ever, and it’s everywhere. Psychologists call this Confirmation Bias: I made a video about it here

Once we’ve decided that we understand something, we become almost blind to anything that proves us wrong. 

BUT:

If we never close the case on people. If we are intensely curious. You will see things that open your mind up to profound truths about the people around you. You have to want to know more than you want to be right. 

If you were intensely curious, then you might be surprised when you come across someone who doesn’t fit what you previously knew. I remember one student, Gloria (names always changed), who was always coming into my class late. I went up to her and asked her:

“Hey Gloria, what’s going on?” I asked. 

“Nothing.” As she put her head down on her desk.

“Hey, I was wondering if there was something we could do to help you come on time.”

“Probably not, I have to drop my younger sister off at school.”

“Is there anyone else who can do that?” 

“No, my mother works two jobs so we can survive. I have to watch my sister so that she can do this. Last night I was up all night because she was sick.” 

Realizing what was going on, I changed tactics: 

“Thanks for letting me know, I’m so glad you are here.” 

If you learn to be curious about people, and curious about the poor, you might actually learn to see. This is so important because the consequences of the poor not being truly seen are a matter of life and death. 

You can comment on this on my facebook post about this here: 

Follow me here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552377647506 

Here is my webpage where I’m keeping all of the installments:

https://www.jeffbrownsclassroom.com/neurodivergent-hs-teacher-blog/learning-to-see

Other Blog posts are here: https://www.jeffbrownsclassroom.com/neurodivergent-hs-teacher-blog