educating the poor

I get the feeling that, when serving the poor (literally, spiritually, emotionally), people tend to look at them as in some way inferior. This could be as innocent as considering them the younger brethren, while we consider ourselves as counselors or helpers to them...like we are doing them a service.

We are always ready to make a saint or
prophet of the educated man who goes into cottages to give a little
kindly advice to the uneducated. But the medieval idea of a saint or
prophet was something quite different. The medieval saint or prophet
was an uneducated man who walked into grand houses to give a little
kindly advice to the educated.
--Chesteron's Heretics

It is the poor who teach us. Stop preaching to them. Start listening.