The Adjunct Underclass

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The Adjunct Underclass

Author : Herb Childress
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022649666X
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (264 download)

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Book Synopsis The Adjunct Underclass by : Herb Childress

Download or read book The Adjunct Underclass written by Herb Childress and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-04-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Class ends. Students pack up and head back to their dorms. The professor, meanwhile, goes to her car . . . to catch a little sleep, and then eat a cheeseburger in her lap before driving across the city to a different university to teach another, wholly different class. All for a paycheck that, once prep and grading are factored in, barely reaches minimum wage. Welcome to the life of the mind in the gig economy. Over the past few decades, the job of college professor has been utterly transformed—for the worse. America’s colleges and universities were designed to serve students and create knowledge through the teaching, research, and stability that come with the longevity of tenured faculty, but higher education today is dominated by adjuncts. In 1975, only thirty percent of faculty held temporary or part-time positions. By 2011, as universities faced both a decrease in public support and ballooning administrative costs, that number topped fifty percent. Now, some surveys suggest that as many as seventy percent of American professors are working course-to-course, with few benefits, little to no security, and extremely low pay. In The Adjunct Underclass, Herb Childress draws on his own firsthand experience and that of other adjuncts to tell the story of how higher education reached this sorry state. Pinpointing numerous forces within and beyond higher ed that have driven this shift, he shows us the damage wrought by contingency, not only on the adjunct faculty themselves, but also on students, the permanent faculty and administration, and the nation. How can we say that we value higher education when we treat educators like desperate day laborers? Measured but passionate, rooted in facts but sure to shock, The Adjunct Underclass reveals the conflicting values, strangled resources, and competing goals that have fundamentally changed our idea of what college should be. This book is a call to arms for anyone who believes that strong colleges are vital to society.

The Adjunct Underclass

Author : Herb Childress
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022649683X
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (264 download)

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Book Synopsis The Adjunct Underclass by : Herb Childress

Download or read book The Adjunct Underclass written by Herb Childress and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-03-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Class ends. Students pack up and head back to their dorms. The professor, meanwhile, goes to her car . . . to catch a little sleep, and then eat a cheeseburger in her lap before driving across the city to a different university to teach another, wholly different class. All for a paycheck that, once prep and grading are factored in, barely reaches minimum wage. Welcome to the life of the mind in the gig economy. Over the past few decades, the job of college professor has been utterly transformed—for the worse. America’s colleges and universities were designed to serve students and create knowledge through the teaching, research, and stability that come with the longevity of tenured faculty, but higher education today is dominated by adjuncts. In 1975, only thirty percent of faculty held temporary or part-time positions. By 2011, as universities faced both a decrease in public support and ballooning administrative costs, that number topped fifty percent. Now, some surveys suggest that as many as seventy percent of American professors are working course-to-course, with few benefits, little to no security, and extremely low pay. In The Adjunct Underclass, Herb Childress draws on his own firsthand experience and that of other adjuncts to tell the story of how higher education reached this sorry state. Pinpointing numerous forces within and beyond higher ed that have driven this shift, he shows us the damage wrought by contingency, not only on the adjunct faculty themselves, but also on students, the permanent faculty and administration, and the nation. How can we say that we value higher education when we treat educators like desperate day laborers? Measured but passionate, rooted in facts but sure to shock, The Adjunct Underclass reveals the conflicting values, strangled resources, and competing goals that have fundamentally changed our idea of what college should be. This book is a call to arms for anyone who believes that strong colleges are vital to society.

Breaking Ranks

Author : Colin Diver
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421443066
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Breaking Ranks by : Colin Diver

Download or read book Breaking Ranks written by Colin Diver and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some colleges will do anything to improve their national ranking. That can be bad for their students—and for higher education. Since U.S. News & World Report first published a college ranking in 1983, the rankings industry has become a self-appointed judge, declaring winners and losers among America's colleges and universities. In this revealing account, Colin Diver shows how popular rankings have induced college applicants to focus solely on pedigree and prestige, while tempting educators to sacrifice academic integrity for short-term competitive advantage. By forcing colleges into standardized "best-college" hierarchies, he argues, rankings have threatened the institutional diversity, intellectual rigor, and social mobility that is the genius of American higher education. As a former university administrator who refused to play the game, Diver leads his readers on an engaging journey through the mysteries of college rankings, admissions, financial aid, spending policies, and academic practices. He explains how most dominant college rankings perpetuate views of higher education as a purely consumer good susceptible to unidimensional measures of brand value and prestige. Many rankings, he asserts, also undermine the moral authority of higher education by encouraging various forms of distorted behavior, misrepresentation, and outright cheating by ranked institutions. The recent Varsity Blues admissions scandal, for example, happened in part because affluent parents wanted to get their children into elite schools by any means necessary. Explaining what is most useful and important in evaluating colleges, Diver offers both college applicants and educators a guide to pursuing their highest academic goals, freed from the siren song of the "best-college" illusion. Ultimately, he reveals how to break ranks with a rankings industry that misleads its consumers, undermines academic values, and perpetuates social inequality.

Reclaiming the Ivory Tower

Author : Joe Berry
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Reclaiming the Ivory Tower by : Joe Berry

Download or read book Reclaiming the Ivory Tower written by Joe Berry and published by . This book was released on 2005-11 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reclaiming the Ivory Tower examines the situation of adjunct professors in U.S. higher education today, describes the process of organizing them to improve their conditions of work, and puts forward an agenda around which adjunct labor can mobilize and transform the universities. In the last twenty years, higher education in the United States has been eroded by massive reliance on temporary academic labor—professors without tenure or prospect of tenure, without benefits, working without offices or research assistance, often commuting between several campuses, and paid a fraction of the salaries of the tenured colleagues. Contingent faculty now constitutes the majority of faculty at U.S. colleges and universities. Analyzing the changing composition of the academic workforce, assessing the strength of new organizing initiatives among adjuncts, and weighing up their strategic options, this is the most comprehensive and engaged account to date of an issue that will become increasingly important for the future of higher education in the United States and in the global context.

Standing for Reason

Author : John Sexton
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300245408
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Standing for Reason by : John Sexton

Download or read book Standing for Reason written by John Sexton and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful case for the importance of universities as an antidote to the “secular dogmatism” that increasingly infects political discourse John Sexton argues that over six decades, a “secular dogmatism,” impenetrable by dialogue or reason, has come to dominate political discourse in America. Political positions, elevated to the status of doctrinal truths, now simply are “revealed.” Our leaders and our citizens suffer from an allergy to nuance and complexity, and the enterprise of thought is in danger. Sexton sees our universities, the engines of knowledge and stewards of thought, as the antidote, and he describes the policies university leaders must embrace if their institutions are to serve this role. Acknowledging the reality of our increasingly interconnected world—and drawing on his experience as president of New York University when it opened campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai—Sexton advocates for “global network universities” as a core aspect of a new educational landscape and as the crucial foundation-blocks of an interlocking world characterized by “secular ecumenism.”

The PhDictionary

Author : Herb Childress
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022635931X
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis The PhDictionary by : Herb Childress

Download or read book The PhDictionary written by Herb Childress and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-05-02 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Navigating academia can seem like a voyage through a foreign land: strange cultural rules dictate everyday interactions, new vocabulary awaits at every turn, and the feeling of being an outsider is unshakable. For students considering doctoral programs and doctoral students considering faculty life, The PhDictionary is a lighthearted companion that illuminates the often opaque customs of academic life. With more than two decades as a doctoral student, college teacher, and administrator, Herb Childress has tripped over almost every possible misunderstood term, run up against every arcane practice, and developed strategies to deal with them all. He combines current data and personal stories into memorable definitions of 150 key phrases and concepts graduate students will need to know (or pretend to know) as they navigate their academic careers. From ABD to white paper—and with buyout, FERPA, gray literature, and soft money in between—each entry contains a helpful definition and plenty of relevant advice. Wry and knowledgeable, Childress is the perfect guide for anyone hoping to scale the ivory tower.

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Author : Nicholas Carr
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393079368
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by : Nicholas Carr

Download or read book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains written by Nicholas Carr and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction: “Nicholas Carr has written a Silent Spring for the literary mind.”—Michael Agger, Slate “Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways. Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection. Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.

The American Millstone

Author :
Publisher : McGraw-Hill/Contemporary
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Millstone by :

Download or read book The American Millstone written by and published by McGraw-Hill/Contemporary. This book was released on 1986 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Ghosts in the Classroom

Author : Michael Dubson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Ghosts in the Classroom by : Michael Dubson

Download or read book Ghosts in the Classroom written by Michael Dubson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Adjunct faculty have become a permanent fixture in the staffing of higher education courses. Approximately 50% of all college courses are taught by adjunct faculty. College administrators expect exemplary professional performance from these teachers. But the low pay, the lack of job security, and the lack of professional support shows that these faculty are certainly not treated as professionals. Who are the people who become--and remain--adjunct faculty? Why do they do it? What do they hope to achieve? How does the way they are treated affect their lives? And the work they are hired to do? Why have the colleges allowed themselves to be dependent upon adjunct faculty? What are the short and long term effects on the students who find themselves in the classrooms of adjunct faculty? These questions will be answered by the essays in this book, all of which were written by adjunct faculty whose lives were forever altered by their experience."--Back cover.

The Gig Academy

Author : Adrianna Kezar
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421432714
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis The Gig Academy by : Adrianna Kezar

Download or read book The Gig Academy written by Adrianna Kezar and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the Gig Academy is the dominant organizational form within the higher education economy—and its troubling implications for faculty, students, and the future of college education. Over the past two decades, higher education employment has undergone a radical transformation with faculty becoming contingent, staff being outsourced, and postdocs and graduate students becoming a larger share of the workforce. For example, the faculty has shifted from one composed mostly of tenure-track, full-time employees to one made up of contingent, part-time teachers. Non-tenure-track instructors now make up 70 percent of college faculty. Their pay for teaching eight courses averages $22,400 a year—less than the annual salary of most fast-food workers. In The Gig Academy, Adrianna Kezar, Tom DePaola, and Daniel T. Scott assess the impact of this disturbing workforce development. Providing an overarching framework that takes the concept of the gig economy and applies it to the university workforce, this book scrutinizes labor restructuring across both academic and nonacademic spheres. By synthesizing these employment trends, the book reveals the magnitude of the problem for individual workers across all institutional types and job categories while illustrating the damaging effects of these changes on student outcomes, campus community, and institutional effectiveness. A pointed critique of contemporary neoliberalism, the book also includes an analysis of the growing divide between employees and administrators. The authors conclude by examining the strengthening state of unionization among university workers. Advocating a collectivist, action-oriented vision for reversing the tide of exploitation, Kezar, DePaola, and Scott urge readers to use the book as a tool to interrogate the state of working relations on their own campuses and fight for a system that is run democratically for the benefit of all. Ultimately, The Gig Academy is a call to arms, one that encourages non-tenure-track faculty, staff, postdocs, graduate students, and administrative and tenure-track allies to unite in a common struggle against the neoliberal Gig Academy.

Lower Ed

Author : Tressie McMillan Cottom
Publisher : New Press, The
ISBN 13 : 162097102X
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Lower Ed by : Tressie McMillan Cottom

Download or read book Lower Ed written by Tressie McMillan Cottom and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than two million students are enrolled in for-profit colleges, from the small family-run operations to the behemoths brandished on billboards, subway ads, and late-night commercials. These schools have been around just as long as their bucolic not-for-profit counterparts, yet shockingly little is known about why they have expanded so rapidly in recent years—during the so-called Wall Street era of for-profit colleges. In Lower Ed Tressie McMillan Cottom—a bold and rising public scholar, herself once a recruiter at two for-profit colleges—expertly parses the fraught dynamics of this big-money industry to show precisely how it is part and parcel of the growing inequality plaguing the country today. McMillan Cottom discloses the shrewd recruitment and marketing strategies that these schools deploy and explains how, despite the well-documented predatory practices of some and the campus closings of others, ending for-profit colleges won't end the vulnerabilities that made them the fastest growing sector of higher education at the turn of the twenty-first century. And she doesn't stop there. With sharp insight and deliberate acumen, McMillan Cottom delivers a comprehensive view of postsecondary for-profit education by illuminating the experiences of the everyday people behind the shareholder earnings, congressional battles, and student debt disasters. The relatable human stories in Lower Ed—from mothers struggling to pay for beauty school to working class guys seeking "good jobs" to accomplished professionals pursuing doctoral degrees—illustrate that the growth of for-profit colleges is inextricably linked to larger questions of race, gender, work, and the promise of opportunity in America. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with students, employees, executives, and activists, Lower Ed tells the story of the benefits, pitfalls, and real costs of a for-profit education. It is a story about broken social contracts; about education transforming from a public interest to a private gain; and about all Americans and the challenges we face in our divided, unequal society.

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

Author : Professor X
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101476206
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis In the Basement of the Ivory Tower by : Professor X

Download or read book In the Basement of the Ivory Tower written by Professor X and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A caustic expose of the deeply state of our colleges-America's most expensive Ponzi scheme. What drives a former English major with a creative writing degree, several unpublished novels, three kids, and a straining marriage to take a job as a night teacher at a second-rate college? An unaffordable mortgage. As his house starts falling apart in every imaginable way, Professor X grabs first one, then two jobs teaching English 101 and 102-composition and literature-at a small private college and a local community college. He finds himself on the front lines of America's academic crisis. It's quite an education. This is the story of what he learns about his struggling pupils, about the college system-a business more bent on its own financial targets than the wellbeing of its students-about the classics he rediscovers, and about himself. Funny, wry, self-deprecating, and a provocative indictment of our failing schools, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower is both a brilliant academic satire and a poignant account of one teacher's seismic frustration-and unlikely salvation-as his real estate woes catapult him into a subprime crisis of an altogether more human nature.

Productivity in Higher Education

Author : Caroline M. Hoxby
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022657458X
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis Productivity in Higher Education by : Caroline M. Hoxby

Download or read book Productivity in Higher Education written by Caroline M. Hoxby and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-11-22 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do the benefits of higher education compare with its costs, and how does this comparison vary across individuals and institutions? These questions are fundamental to quantifying the productivity of the education sector. The studies in Productivity in Higher Education use rich and novel administrative data, modern econometric methods, and careful institutional analysis to explore productivity issues. The authors examine the returns to undergraduate education, differences in costs by major, the productivity of for-profit schools, the productivity of various types of faculty and of outcomes, the effects of online education on the higher education market, and the ways in which the productivity of different institutions responds to market forces. The analyses recognize five key challenges to assessing productivity in higher education: the potential for multiple student outcomes in terms of skills, earnings, invention, and employment; the fact that colleges and universities are “multiproduct” firms that conduct varied activities across many domains; the fact that students select which school to attend based in part on their aptitude; the difficulty of attributing outcomes to individual institutions when students attend more than one; and the possibility that some of the benefits of higher education may arise from the system as a whole rather than from a single institution. The findings and the approaches illustrated can facilitate decision-making processes in higher education.

The Amateur Hour

Author : Jonathan Zimmerman
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421439107
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis The Amateur Hour by : Jonathan Zimmerman

Download or read book The Amateur Hour written by Jonathan Zimmerman and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-length history of college teaching in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present, this book sheds new light on the ongoing tension between the modern scholarly ideal—scientific, objective, and dispassionate—and the inevitably subjective nature of day-to-day instruction. American college teaching is in crisis, or so we are told. But we've heard that complaint for the past 150 years, as critics have denounced the poor quality of instruction in undergraduate classrooms. Students daydream in gigantic lecture halls while a professor drones on, or they meet with a teaching assistant for an hour of aimless discussion. The modern university does not reward teaching, so faculty members at every level neglect it in favor of research and publication. In the first book-length history of American college teaching, Jonathan Zimmerman confirms but also contradicts these perennial complaints. Drawing upon a wide range of previously unexamined sources, The Amateur Hour shows how generations of undergraduates indicted the weak instruction they received. But Zimmerman also chronicles institutional efforts to improve it, especially by making teaching more "personal." As higher education grew into a gigantic industry, he writes, American colleges and universities introduced small-group activities and other reforms designed to counter the anonymity of mass instruction. They also experimented with new technologies like television and computers, which promised to "personalize" teaching by tailoring it to the individual interests and abilities of each student. But, Zimmerman reveals, the emphasis on the personal inhibited the professionalization of college teaching, which remains, ultimately, an amateur enterprise. The more that Americans treated teaching as a highly personal endeavor, dependent on the idiosyncrasies of the instructor, the less they could develop shared standards for it. Nor have they rigorously documented college instruction, a highly public activity which has taken place mostly in private. Pushing open the classroom door, The Amateur Hour illuminates American college teaching and frames a fresh case for restoring intimate learning communities, especially for America's least privileged students. Anyone who wants to change college teaching will have to start here.

Spare the Rod

Author : Campbell F. Scribner
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022678570X
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis Spare the Rod by : Campbell F. Scribner

Download or read book Spare the Rod written by Campbell F. Scribner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Spare the Rod, historian Campbell F. Scribner and philosopher Bryan R. Warnick think deeply about punishment and discipline practices in American schooling. To delve into this controversial subject, the authors carefully consider two major issues. The first involves questions of meaning. How have concepts of discipline and punishment in schools changed overtime? What purposes are they supposed to serve? And what can they tell us about our assumptions about education? The second issue involves the justification of punishment and discipline in schools. Are public school educators ever justified in punishing or disciplining students? Are these things important for moral education? Or, are they fundamentally opposed to education? If some form of punishment is justified in schools, what ethical guidelines should direct its administration? The authors argue that as schools have grown increasingly bureaucratic over the past century, formalizing disciplinary systems and shifting from physical punishments to forms of spatial or structural punishment (such as suspension), school discipline has not only come to resemble the operation of prisons or policing but has grown increasingly integrated with those institutions. These changes, they argue, disregard the unique status of schools as spaces of moral growth and community oversight, and are incompatible with the developmental ethos of education. What we need is a view of discipline and punishment that fits with the sort of moral community that schools should be"--

These Walls Between Us

Author : Wendy Sanford
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1647421683
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (474 download)

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Book Synopsis These Walls Between Us by : Wendy Sanford

Download or read book These Walls Between Us written by Wendy Sanford and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an author of the best-selling women’s health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves comes a bracingly forthright memoir about a life-long friendship across racial and class divides. A white woman’s necessary learning, and a Black woman’s complex evolution, make These Walls Between Us a “tender, honest, cringeworthy and powerful read.” (Debby Irving, author, Waking Up White.) In the mid-1950s, a fifteen-year-old African American teenager named Mary White (now Mary Norman) traveled north from Virginia to work for twelve-year-old Wendy Sanford’s family as a live-in domestic for their summer vacation by a remote New England beach. Over the years, Wendy's family came to depend on Mary’s skilled service—and each summer, Mary endured the extreme loneliness of their elite white beachside retreat in order to support her family. As the Black “help” and the privileged white daughter, Mary and Wendy were not slated for friendship. But years later—each divorced, each a single parent, Mary now a rising officer in corrections and Wendy a feminist health activist—they began to walk the beach together after dark, talking about their children and their work, and a friendship began to grow. Based on decades’ worth of visits, phone calls, letters, and texts between Mary and Wendy, These Walls Between Us chronicles the two women’s friendship, with a focus on what Wendy characterizes as her “oft-stumbling efforts, as a white woman, to see Mary more fully and to become a more dependable friend.” The book examines obstacles created by Wendy’s upbringing in a narrow, white, upper-class world; reveals realities of domestic service rarely acknowledged by white employers; and draws on classic works by the African American writers whose work informed and challenged Wendy along the way. Though Wendy is the work’s primary author, Mary read and commented on every draft—and together, the two friends hope their story will incite and support white readers to become more informed and accountable friends across the racial divides created by white supremacy and to become active in the ongoing movement for racial justice.

Common Sense

Author : Joel Greenblatt
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231552866
Total Pages : 127 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Common Sense by : Joel Greenblatt

Download or read book Common Sense written by Joel Greenblatt and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is supposed to offer economic opportunity to everyone. It shouldn’t take a worldwide pandemic and nationwide protests to bring economic and racial inequality to the forefront of problems we desperately need to solve. But now that the opportunity is here, what should we do? How can we create more equality, opportunity, and growth for everyone? Not someday, but what can government and the private sector do right now to disrupt a status quo that almost everyone wants to change? In Common Sense, the New York Times best-selling author Joel Greenblatt offers an investor’s perspective on building an economy that truly works for everyone. With dry wit and engaging storytelling, he makes a lively and provocative case for disruptive new approaches—some drawn from personal experience, some from the outside looking in. How can leading corporations immediately disrupt our education establishment while creating high-paying job opportunities for those currently left behind? If we want a living wage for everyone, how can we afford it while using an existing program to get it done now? If we subsidize banks, what simple changes can we make to the way we capitalize and regulate them to help grow the economy, increase access, and create more jobs (while keeping the risks and benefits where they belong)? Greenblatt also explains how dramatically increasing immigration would be like giving every American a giant bonus and the reason Australia might be the best place to learn about saving for retirement. Not everyone will agree with what Greenblatt has to say—but all of us can benefit from the conversations he aims to start.