Download or read book The Privileged Poor written by Anthony Abraham Jack and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NPR Favorite Book of the Year “Breaks new ground on social and educational questions of great import.” —Washington Post “An essential work, humane and candid, that challenges and expands our understanding of the lives of contemporary college students.” —Paul Tough, author of Helping Children Succeed “Eye-opening...Brings home the pain and reality of on-campus poverty and puts the blame squarely on elite institutions.” —Washington Post “Jack’s investigation redirects attention from the matter of access to the matter of inclusion...His book challenges universities to support the diversity they indulge in advertising.” —New Yorker The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In this bracing exposé, Anthony Jack shows that many students’ struggles continue long after they’ve settled in their dorms. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This powerfully argued book documents how university policies and campus culture can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why some students are harder hit than others.

Download or read book The Long Shadow written by Karl Alexander and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2014-05-31 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology West Baltimore stands out in the popular imagination as the quintessential “inner city”—gritty, run-down, and marred by drugs and gang violence. Indeed, with the collapse of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s, the area experienced a rapid onset of poverty and high unemployment, with few public resources available to alleviate economic distress. But in stark contrast to the image of a perpetual “urban underclass” depicted in television by shows like The Wire, sociologists Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson present a more nuanced portrait of Baltimore’s inner city residents that employs important new research on the significance of early-life opportunities available to low-income populations. The Long Shadow focuses on children who grew up in west Baltimore neighborhoods and others like them throughout the city, tracing how their early lives in the inner city have affected their long-term well-being. Although research for this book was conducted in Baltimore, that city’s struggles with deindustrialization, white flight, and concentrated poverty were characteristic of most East Coast and Midwest manufacturing cities. The experience of Baltimore’s children who came of age during this era is mirrored in the experiences of urban children across the nation. For 25 years, the authors of The Long Shadow tracked the life progress of a group of almost 800 predominantly low-income Baltimore school children through the Beginning School Study Youth Panel (BSSYP). The study monitored the children’s transitions to young adulthood with special attention to how opportunities available to them as early as first grade shaped their socioeconomic status as adults. The authors’ fine-grained analysis confirms that the children who lived in more cohesive neighborhoods, had stronger families, and attended better schools tended to maintain a higher economic status later in life. As young adults, they held higher-income jobs and had achieved more personal milestones (such as marriage) than their lower-status counterparts. Differences in race and gender further stratified life opportunities for the Baltimore children. As one of the first studies to closely examine the outcomes of inner-city whites in addition to African Americans, data from the BSSYP shows that by adulthood, white men of lower status family background, despite attaining less education on average, were more likely to be employed than any other group in part due to family connections and long-standing racial biases in Baltimore’s industrial economy. Gender imbalances were also evident: the women, who were more likely to be working in low-wage service and clerical jobs, earned less than men. African American women were doubly disadvantaged insofar as they were less likely to be in a stable relationship than white women, and therefore less likely to benefit from a second income. Combining original interviews with Baltimore families, teachers, and other community members with the empirical data gathered from the authors’ groundbreaking research, The Long Shadow unravels the complex connections between socioeconomic origins and socioeconomic destinations to reveal a startling and much-needed examination of who succeeds and why.

Download or read book Making the Most of College written by Richard J. Light and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-30 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some students make the most of college, while others struggle and look back on years of missed deadlines and missed opportunities? What choices can students make, and what can teachers and university leaders do, to improve more students’ experiences and help them achieve the most from their time and money? Most important, how is the increasing diversity on campus—cultural, racial, and religious—affecting education? What can students and faculty do to benefit from differences, and even learn from the inevitable moments of misunderstanding and awkwardness? From his ten years of interviews with Harvard seniors, Richard Light distills encouraging—and surprisingly practical—answers to fundamental questions. How can you choose classes wisely? What’s the best way to study? Why do some professors inspire and others leave you cold? How can you connect what you discover in class to all you’re learning in the rest of life? Light suggests, for instance: studying in pairs or groups can be more productive than studying alone; the first and most important skill to learn is time management; supervised independent research projects and working internships offer the most learning and the greatest challenges; and encounters with students of different religions can be simultaneously the most taxing and most illuminating of all the experiences with a diverse student body. Filled with practical advice, illuminated with stories of real students’ self-doubts, failures, discoveries, and hopes, Making the Most of College is a handbook for academic and personal success.

Download or read book The Years that Matter Most written by Paul Tough and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of How Children Succeed returns with a devastatingly powerful, mind-changing inquiry into higher education in the U.S.

Download or read book The Diversity Bargain written by Natasha K. Warikoo and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We’ve heard plenty from politicians and experts on affirmative action and higher education, about how universities should intervene—if at all—to ensure a diverse but deserving student population. But what about those for whom these issues matter the most? In this book, Natasha K. Warikoo deeply explores how students themselves think about merit and race at a uniquely pivotal moment: after they have just won the most competitive game of their lives and gained admittance to one of the world’s top universities. What Warikoo uncovers—talking with both white students and students of color at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford—is absolutely illuminating; and some of it is positively shocking. As she shows, many elite white students understand the value of diversity abstractly, but they ignore the real problems that racial inequality causes and that diversity programs are meant to solve. They stand in fear of being labeled a racist, but they are quick to call foul should a diversity program appear at all to hamper their own chances for advancement. The most troubling result of this ambivalence is what she calls the “diversity bargain,” in which white students reluctantly agree with affirmative action as long as it benefits them by providing a diverse learning environment—racial diversity, in this way, is a commodity, a selling point on a brochure. And as Warikoo shows, universities play a big part in creating these situations. The way they talk about race on campus and the kinds of diversity programs they offer have a huge impact on student attitudes, shaping them either toward ambivalence or, in better cases, toward more productive and considerate understandings of racial difference. Ultimately, this book demonstrates just how slippery the notions of race, merit, and privilege can be. In doing so, it asks important questions not just about college admissions but what the elite students who have succeeded at it—who will be the world’s future leaders—will do with the social inequalities of the wider world.

Download or read book Miseducation written by Diane Reay and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2017-10-11 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Diane Reay, herself working-class-turned-Cambridge-professor, presents a 21st-century view of education and the working classes. Drawing on over 500 interviews, the book includes vivid stories from working-class children and young people. It looks at class identity, and the effects of wider economic and social class relationships on working-class educational experiences. The book reveals how we have ended up with an educational system that still educates the different social classes in fundamentally different ways and, vitally, what we can do to achieve a fairer system. Book jacket.

Download or read book Social Mix and the City written by Kathy Arthurson and published by CSIRO PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2012-01-19 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concern about rising crime rates, high levels of unemployment and anti-social behaviour of youth gangs within particular urban neighbourhoods has reinvigorated public and community debate into just what makes a functional neighbourhood. The nub of the debate is whether concentrating disadvantaged people together doubly compounds their disadvantage and leads to 'problem neighbourhoods'. This debate has prompted interest by governments in Australia and internationally in 'social mix policies', to disperse the most disadvantaged members of neighbourhoods and create new communities with a blend of residents with a variety of income levels across different housing tenures (public and private rental, home ownership). What is less well acknowledged is that interest in social mix is by no means new, as the concept has informed new town planning policy in Australia, Britain and the US since the post Second World War years. Social Mix and the City offers a critical appraisal of different ways that the concept of ‘social mix’ has been constructed historically in urban planning and housing policy, including linking to 'social inclusion'. It investigates why social mix policies re-emerge as a popular policy tool at certain times. It also challenges the contemporary consensus in housing and urban planning policies that social mix is an optimum planning tool – in particular notions about middle class role modelling to integrate problematic residents into more 'acceptable' social behaviours. Importantly, it identifies whether social mix matters or has any real effect from the viewpoint of those affected by the policies – residents where policies have been implemented.

Download or read book Fugitive Cultures written by Henry A. Giroux and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fugitive Cultures examines how youth are being increasingly subjected to racial stereotyping and violence in various realms of popular culture, especially children's culture. But rather than dismissing popular culture, Henry Giroux addresses its political and pedagogical value as a site of critique and learning and calls for a reinvigorated critical relationship between cultural studies and those diverse cultural workers committed to expanding the possibilities and practices of democratic public life.

Download or read book The Tolls of Uncertainty written by Sarah Damaske and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An indispensable investigation into the American unemployment system and the ways gender and class affect the lives of those looking for work Through the intimate stories of those seeking work, The Tolls of Uncertainty offers a startling look at the nation’s unemployment system—who it helps, who it hurts, and what, if anything, we can do to make it fair. Drawing on interviews with one hundred men and women who have lost jobs across Pennsylvania, Sarah Damaske examines the ways unemployment shapes families, finances, health, and the job hunt. Damaske demonstrates that commonly held views of unemployment are either incomplete or just plain wrong. Shaped by a person’s gender and class, unemployment generates new inequalities that cast uncertainties on the search for work and on life chances beyond the world of work, threatening opportunity in America. Following in depth the lives of four individuals over the course of their unemployment experiences, Damaske offers insights into how the unemployed perceive their relationship to work. She reveals the high levels of blame that women who have lost jobs place on themselves, leading them to put their families’ needs above their own, sacrifice their health, and take on more tasks inside the home. This “guilt gap” illustrates how unemployment all too often exacerbates existing differences between men and women. Class privilege, too, gives some an advantage, while leaving others at the mercy of an underfunded unemployment system. Middle-class men are generally able to create the time and space to search for good work, but many others are bogged down by the challenges of poverty-level unemployment benefits and family pressures and fall further behind. Timely and engaging, The Tolls of Uncertainty posits that a new path must be taken if the nation’s unemployed are to find real relief.

Download or read book Against Meritocracy written by Jo Littler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-16 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meritocracy today involves the idea that whatever your social position at birth, society ought to offer enough opportunity and mobility for ‘talent’ to combine with ‘effort’ in order to ‘rise to the top’. This idea is one of the most prevalent social and cultural tropes of our time, as palpable in the speeches of politicians as in popular culture. In this book Jo Littler argues that meritocracy is the key cultural means of legitimation for contemporary neoliberal culture – and that whilst it promises opportunity, it in fact creates new forms of social division. Against Meritocracy is split into two parts. Part I explores the genealogies of meritocracy within social theory, political discourse and working cultures. It traces the dramatic U-turn in meritocracy’s meaning, from socialist slur to a contemporary ideal of how a society should be organised. Part II uses a series of case studies to analyse the cultural pull of popular ‘parables of progress’, from reality TV to the super-rich and celebrity CEOs, from social media controversies to the rise of the ‘mumpreneur’. Paying special attention to the role of gender, ‘race’ and class, this book provides new conceptualisations of the meaning of meritocracy in contemporary culture and society.

Download or read book Being With and Saying Goodbye written by Andrew West and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time of increasing financial pressure on families - as well as the services that support them - children are doubly disadvantaged. The economical mass-provision of proven approaches appears to be an unquestionable strategy. In this frank and revealing book, written by an experienced child and adolescent psychiatrist of eclectic and questioning persuasion, the argument is made that we are travelling in the wrong direction. A blinkered pursuit of empirical evidence and uniform delivery is leading us away from any sensitive and reciprocal relationship between caring professionals and the young individuals whose interests they are there to serve. Drawing on attachment and psychodynamic approaches, as well as systemic, values-based and mindful practice, Being With and Saying Goodbye describes an attitude that should be the prerequisite and medium of all child and adolescent work that has therapeutic intention. Unacknowledged, even reviled, this ghost in the machine is threatened with extinction.

Download or read book Inexcusable Absence written by Maureen A. Lewis and published by CGD Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Girls' education, indisputably crucial to development, has received a lot of attention--but surprisingly little hardheaded analysis to inform practical policy solutions. In Inexcusable Absence, Maureen Lewis and Marlaine Lockheed propose new strategies for reaching the 70 percent of out-of-school girls who are "doubly disadvantaged" by their ethnicity, language, or other factors. The book will be an important tool for policymakers, informing interventions that can make a profound impact on the lives of the 60 million out-of-school girls.

Download or read book The University of Google written by Tara Brabazon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-17 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking at schools and universities, it is difficult to pinpoint when education, teaching and learning started to haemorrhage purpose, aspiration and function. Libraries and librarians have been starved of funding. Teachers cram their curriculum with 'skill development' and 'generic competencies' because knowledge, creativity and originality are too expensive to provide to unmotivated students and parents obsessed with league tables, not learning. Meanwhile, the internet offers a glut of information on everything-under-the-sun, a mere mouse-click away. Bored surfers fill their cursors and minds with irrelevancies. We lose the capacity to sift, discard and judge. Information is no longer for social good, but for sale. Tara Brabazon argues that this information fetish has been profoundly damaging to our learning institutions and to the ambitions of our students and educators. In The University of Google she projects a defiant and passionate vision of education as a pathway to renewal, where research is based on searching and students are on a journey through knowledge, rather than consumers in the shopping centre of cheap ideas. Angry, humorous and practical in equal measure, The University of Google is based on real teaching experience and on years of engaged and sometimes exasperated reflection on it. It is far from a luddite critique of the information age. Tara Brabazon celebrates the possibilities of digital platforms in education, but deplores the consequences of placing funding on technology and not teachers. In doing so, she opens a new debate on how to make our educational system both productive and provocative in the (post-) information age.

Download or read book Moving Up Without Losing Your Way written by Jennifer M. Morton and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, Moving Up without Losing Your Way looks at the ethical dilemmas of upward mobility--the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity--faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society"--Dust jacket.

Download or read book Financial Capability and Asset Building in Vulnerable Households written by Margaret Sherraden and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-28 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Financial struggles of American families are headline news. In communities across the nation, families feel the pinch of stagnant and sometimes declining incomes. Many have not recovered from the Great Recession, when millions lost their homes and retirement savings. They are bombarded daily with vexing financial decisions: Which bills to pay? Where to cash checks? How to cover an emergency? How to improve a credit report? How to bank online? How to save for the future? Low- and moderate-income families have few places to turn for guidance on financial matters. Not many can afford to pay a financial advisor to help navigate an increasingly complex financial world. They do their best with advice from family and trusted individuals. Social workers, financial counselors, and human services professionals can help. As "first responders," they assist families and help in finding financial support from public and private sources. But these professionals are too often unprepared to address the full range of financial troubles of ordinary working families. Financial Capability and Asset Building in Vulnerable Households prepares social workers, financial counselors, and other human service professionals for financial practice with vulnerable families. Building on more than 20 years of research, the book sets the stage with key concepts, historical antecedents, and current financial challenges of families in America. It provides knowledge and tools to assist families in pressing financial circumstances, and offers a lifespan perspective of financial capability and environmental influences on financial behaviors and actions. Furthermore, the text details practice principles and skills for direct interventions, as well as for designing financial services and policy innovations. It is an essential resource for preparing the next generation of practitioners who can enable families to achieve economic security and development.

Download or read book Ageing Resource Communities written by Mark Skinner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the world’s hinterland regions, people are growing old in resource-dependent communities that were neither originally designed nor presently equipped to support an ageing population. This book provides cutting edge theoretical and empirical insights into the new phenomenon resource frontier ageing, to understand the diverse experiences of and responses to rural population ageing in the early 21st century. The book explores the resource hinterland as a new frontier of rural ageing and examines three central themes of rural population change, community development and voluntarism that characterize ageing resource communities. By investigating the links among these three themes, the book provides the conceptual and empirical foundations for the future agenda of rural ageing research. This timely contribution contains 15 original chapters by leading international experts from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, UK, Ireland and Norway.

Download or read book Politics in Socrates Alcibiades written by Andre Archie and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-03-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides the first full, political and philosophically rigorous account of Plato’s dialogue Alcibiades Major. The book argues that Alcibiades Major accomplishes its goal, which is to redirect Alcibiades’ political ambitions, not by arguing for specific propositions based on specific premises. The dialogue accomplishes its goal by generalizing the notion of argument to include appeals to Alcibiades’ doxastic attitudes toward his ability and knowledge to become a powerful ruler of the Greek people. One such doxastic attitude that Alcibiades holds about himself, and one that Socrates deftly disabuses him of, is that he does not have to cultivate himself to be competitive with the local, Athenian politicians. Socrates reminds Alcibiades that his true competitors are not Athenian politicians, but rather the Spartan and Persian kings. Consequently, the psychological momentum of the dialogue is motivated by Socrates’ aim to engender the right sort of beliefs in Alcibiades.