Social Class Links 02/18/2010
February 18, 2010
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“The Foreclosure Generation documents the experiences of families who are forced to leave their homes due to a foreclosure. Families interviewed generally had exhausted all available resources in an effort to keep their homes, were unable to secure assistance from their mortgage servicer, and often relied on relatives and friends for shelter and assistance. Marital discord, anxiety, depression, children’s poor performance in school, financial loss, and strained relationships between parents and children were among the consequences reported.”
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Currents – Waking Up From American Dreams – NYTimes.com
“The Horatio Alger narrative maintains its hold in the United States. A Gallup/USA Today poll last year found that three-quarters of Americans still believe that if you work hard and follow the rules, you can achieve the American Dream.
But a large number of people also tell pollsters that it is becoming harder to get ahead, that tension is rising between rich and poor, that the rich are rich because of connections and fortunate birth.”
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Cheap Cynism About The Educated
February 10, 2010
I spend a great deal of my time these days working with students who are building a mentoring program to encourage first generation/low-income students to aspire to and become competitive for college. I and the student mentors talk a great deal about the necessity of addressing the mentees’ questions about the value of college, about whether they belong in college, about negotiating the suspicions that parents might have about how college will change their children.
We do this work because opening access to higher education is right and just. We do it because we understand that while college guarantees no one economic security, skipping college is now a near guarantee of economic insecurity.
So I grow very impatient with college- educated politicians who keep playing the cynical political rhetoric about “out of touch professors“. For all its populist tone, that rhetoric is an insiders’ game, played over the heads of families who, in this generation, are facing difficult and complicated and wrenching decision about whether sons and daughters now will cross over, enroll in college, and perhaps then become “The Man”, become like those who have long worked against the interests of working people.
So exactly what message do Sarah Palin and others who mock “professors” in political rhetoric want these families to hear?
That “real” people are right to be suspicious about college? That to attend college will, in fact, distance their children from real issues, real social problems, real wisdom? That blue-collar parents are wise to be cynical about the value of a college degree?
Such cynical and cheap political rhetoric is possible only among those who themselves have lost touch with the significant social and cultural and economic weight of the choice to Become Educated when education is not part of a families’ legacy.
And they’re making my work and the work of the student mentees with whom I work that much more difficult.
Social Class Links 02/10/2010
February 10, 2010
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The shifting demographics of higher ed, largely invisible in policy deliberations.
“U.S. Department of Education studies reveal that, by various measures, almost 75 percent of college students today are “non-traditional”—in that they are paying for college themselves and not relying on parents (more than 51 percent of college students are “independent” financially); are attending college part-time (about 48 percent of college students); are delaying when they start college after high school (about 46 percent); are commuting rather than residing on campus (about 80 percent); are holding full-time jobs while working on their degrees; or are supporting children and other dependents.”
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Op-Ed Columnist – The Worst of the Pain – NYTimes.com
“The people suffering the most drastic employment reversals in this recession have been those who were in the lower-income groups to begin with — the young, less well-educated workers, especially black and Hispanic high school dropouts, and certain categories of service workers, such as food preparers and building cleaners. Blue-collar workers were also hammered, especially those in the construction industry.”
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Social Class Links 12/22/2009
December 22, 2009
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The Education Optimists: First, Do Your Homework
Excellent essay on affordability, college success, and the shortsightedness of policymakers’ solutions for both.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
The Trauma of Joblessness
December 14, 2009
According to a new poll by the New York Times/CBS News, reported in today’s New York Times,
Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll of unemployed adults, causing major life changes, mental health issues and trouble maintaining even basic necessities.
I’ve read and heard little about how school are helping children to understand what is happening to their parents, how they’re trying to articulate for children the reasons for becoming educated in uncertain times, how they are teaching children to be deeply proud of struggling parents.
I’ve read and heard little about how schools are now explaining that reward does not always go to those who have worked very hard.
These would seem to be essential lessons in this changing world.
