Week 2

I was not sure what to write about here seeing as I wrote about Kozol last time and I am beginning to tutor at the I Have a Dream Foundation on Thursday so I decided to relate some of my other coursework to this class, specifically the film Examined Life.

            This semester I am working on my economics thesis paper, which I plan to be an analysis of the market for collectable items. This market is difficult to define since just about any item can be collected. I have read some papers that describe the various things people collect ranging from empty beer cans to antique oarlocks. However, collectable items are different from things people collect in that collectable items are part of a set, presumably one outlined by the manufacturer but often retrospectively by antique enthusiasts. Russell Belk, author of Collecting in a Consumer Society, describes collecting as “the process of actively, selectively, and passionately acquiring and possessing things removed from ordinary use and perceived as part of a set of non-identical objects or experiences”.

            This topic may seem random since I do not consider myself a collector. However, I was led into this topic as a result of my family’s obsession with the Beanie Baby fad in the late nineties. When I was considering ideas for my project, I kept coming back to the idea of fads and how something people fight over in stores becomes something I keep in the back of my closet now. I shudder to think how much money was spent on my enormous Beanie Baby collection and wonder what made us purchase all of them. Since only in hindsight is really possible to identify a fad, I went in another direction. Collectables are so useless really and yet people obsess over them and get extremely attached to their collections.

            In some ways, collectors are seeking connections with other collectors, describing their feelings at interacting with other collectors of the same good as being the only time they feel they are truly understood. In other ways collecting drives people away. Examples are described in which collector’s children feel they are in competition with the collection for their mother or father’s attention.

            What really reminded me of this class and the film Examined Life had to do with what Peter Singer spoke about while he was walking down a street in a major shopping district of New York City. He was speaking about ethics and he said that when we choose to spend money on one thing we are choosing not to spend money on another thing. In other words, by choosing to purchase one more cup of coffee, I am choosing not to spend my money giving someone in an underdeveloped country clean drinking water. He says that the choices we make are unethical.

            Collecting is just an extreme example of our habit of surrounding ourselves with things. In another article by Russell Belk titled, Collecting as Luxury Consumption: Effects on Households and Individuals, we are introduced to Marsha and Julian, both avid collectors. Among their collections they own over two hundred antique oarlocks, six hundred doilies, over a thousand astronomy books, forty-seven rocking chairs, and more than two thousand plates, cups, and saucers (To be fair, they are an extreme example, though Belk differentiates between collectors and hoarders in that they do not collect randomly, others may perceive what they own as having value). They realize they have a problem when they are unable to fit a recent acquisition to their furniture collection into their house. 

            The couple ends up paying somebody to come and get rid of all their stuff for them. When they return to their house after it has been emptied, they express a feeling of emptiness. Without their things, Julian comments about his home, “It is cold out there, inhospitable, alien. There’s nothing there, nothing contained in nothing. Nothing at all” (478). I believe this statement says something about how we see our lives without the protection of things.

Week 1

Martha Nussbaum in Examined Life spoke about the influence of the traditional approach of philosophers like Hobbes and Locke on popular culture. Their approach began with assumptions as to how people will act in the so-called “state of nature” meaning without governments to corral them into acceptable behavior.  In popular culture this approach has made it okay or provided an excuse for selfishness since everyone is out for themselves, tying into the puritanical idea that working hard will lead to material benefits. It follows that the poor have not worked hard enough and are to blame for their own situation, undeserving of public assistance.

However, what people think they earned in many cases is in fact the product of a history of privilege. This relates to what Jonathan Kozol writes in Shame of the Nation, that disadvantaged children are the product of disadvantaged adults and judging them by the same standardized tests by which we judge advantaged children is wrong. An eight year olds' poor work ethic is not truly to blame for poor performance on standardized tests, especially when compared to children of the same age given twice the number of years of education. 

What it comes down to is that people are unwilling to pay for another child’s education when it does not directly benefit their own child. Wealthier people may be uncomfortable with the unfairness of the current education system, but they are ultimately unwilling to provide more money to disadvantaged children when that money can go to their own children and they pressure the system to keep possible money drains, or poor children, out of their own children's classrooms. At the same time there is a fear that students starting behind others will take up more time, keeping more advanced students behind. Even within schools they split up classes into children better or worse at certain subjects, for example my elementary school split us into upper, middle, and lower level math and reading classes beginning in fourth grade. 

         

Kozol’s experiences in Shame of the Nation remind me of my high school experience in some ways. I went to school at one of the more high performing public school in Cabarrus County. Though nearly forty years old, the school had a history of performing highly on standardized tests, having a large number of advanced placement classes and a reputation of good teachers. Then in 2008 a new school opened in Harrisburg, closer to where I lived. My graduating class was allowed to finish at the older school since we were graduating that year. That year, many of my peers were discussing some of the gossip we had been hearing from the teachers, like that our year was the last good one, and the juniors coming up behind us were a lot less motivated. I noticed teachers retiring, for example both my AP Chemistry and my AP Statistics teachers retired that year. 

            I realized that the new school opening was splitting the school district socioeconomically, what Kozol calls re-segregating. The newer school was absorbing students from the more wealthy neighborhoods and my school was keeping the students from the less wealthy neighborhoods. Within a year of my graduation, my old high school was implementing extremely strict dress codes (no jeans and no wearing the color red), and many of my teachers had moved to other schools. My former civics and economics teacher who actually graduated from the same high school and had taught there for decades retired within two years of my graduation. Everyone I talk to about that is so surprised because of how often she spoke about loving the school. 

It seemed as though all the teachers with years of experience were finding jobs at better schools or retiring, which leads me to this article

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/27/teach-for-america-met-wit_n_1114995.html

From the article, “Many countries… send the strongest and most experienced teachers to work with the lowest performing students. The U.S. has done the reverse. There are nearly twice as many teachers with fewer than three years' experience in schools where students are predominantly low income and minority”.

This is an article I thought was interesting in relation to Kozol’s observation that many of the teachers he met in these schools were inexperienced and the schools had extremely high teacher turnover rates. I wondered if any of those he met may be involved with Teach for America though at least the one, Mr. Endicott from chapter three, was involved in a separate program which exchanged work in low-performing schools for education classes. 

I think the idea behind Teach for America is good, the view that new blood and new ideas will reinvigorate a lagging school (like in Freedom Writers!). However it also seems a little illogical to put the least experienced teachers in such a difficult situation. Most of the teachers Kozol spoke to were probably not involved in the program, which raises the question of why experienced teachers do not want to work in these schools - pretty obvious going off of Kozol’s discussion of comparative teacher salaries.

Kozol’s point is that there are many factors going into the failure of these schools beginning with a lack of funding and pre-K programs that put students at a disadvantage before even starting school. Segregating the schools into disadvantaged and advantaged or minority and Caucasian perpetuates this problem.

            Also a video of Jonathan Kozol speaking at Sonoma State University. He seems like a pretty funny guy.