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Teaching About Labor Issues and the Wisconsin Worker Fight Back
Finding good resources to teach kids about working-class issues and labor history is difficult, so am very happy to find this excellent compilation.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Filed under: social class 
Education and Class
The New Poor – For-Profit Schools Cashing In on Recession and Federal Aid – NYTimes.com
Education as Exploitation
“At institutions that train students for careers in areas like health care, computers and food service, enrollments are soaring as people anxious about weak job prospects borrow aggressively to pay tuition that can exceed $ 30,000 a year.
But the profits have come at substantial taxpayer expense while often delivering dubious benefits to students, according to academics and advocates for greater oversight of financial aid. Critics say many schools exaggerate the value of their degree programs, selling young people on dreams of middle-class wages while setting them up for default on untenable debts, low-wage work and a struggle to avoid poverty. And the schools are harvesting growing federal student aid dollars, including Pell grants awarded to low-income students. “
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Filed under: social…
Poll Finds Tea Party Anger Rooted in Issues of Class – NYTimes.com
“The overwhelming majority of Tea Party supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by, and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent, compared with 11 percent of the general public, think that the administration favors blacks over whites. They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people. “
Economic Scene – Yes, 47% of Households Owe No Taxes. Look Closer. – NYTimes.com
Poor and working class families portrayed as being on the dole on Fox News.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Filed under: social class 
Education and Class
Views: Open Door to What? – Inside Higher Ed
Good piece on the recent calls to encourage more students to aspire to short-term technical training rather than to college
“Some scholars have been asking for years if this extreme stratification is the only way to organize modern labor. Have we simply gotten used to a narrow vision of technical work in America, one that leaves a great many people in lower-paid, unsatisfying jobs, ill-equipped for more satisfying and creative work, while the most privileged among us hold onto our advantages in education and work as in society in general? And the question for today: Do community colleges, providing as a rule short, vocationally focused programming, actually stand in the way of more people gaining more knowledge, and doing more interesting work, despite the relative good these institutions have done for individuals over the generations?”
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Interactive Map: Rural Students in Poverty
“Almost one-third of American schools are rural, and more than 40 percent of those students are living in poverty”.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Filed under: social class 
Education and Class
‘Made in Dagenham,’ Not Made in Hollywood – NYTimes.com
A good New York Times article comparing British films’ depictions of working class characters and the recent relative invisibility of working class lives in Hollywood movies.
A quote:
Finally, the current paucity of working-class characters may sometimes come down to plain old attitude. Courtney Hunt, the writer and director of 2008’s “Frozen River,” remembers the indignant reaction of a wealthy potential investor after he’d read her screenplay about a heroine who becomes a smuggler to stave off having her trailer home repossessed.
“These characters are losers, they’re losers,” he ranted to Ms. Hunt.
“No,” she replied, “they’re just poor.”
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Filed under: social class 
Education and Class