WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

Moving Forward
as the study shows, is that few Americans (including public administration
students and practitioners) appreciate how much of the country’s wealth resides
in so few hands.
I would close this discussion by again drawing two lines on the board and
asking students to mark each one according to their political leanings and
their parents’ social class standing, respectively. Next, I would task them with
appending a 10-page addendum to their earlier personal narratives saying what
they have learned from (a) this in-class exercise, (b) the autobiographical writing
assignment, and (c) the related discussions about social class inequalities. I would
use these materials as a feedback loop for myself, as a measure of how students
responded to my efforts at conveying a deeper understanding of the connection
among politics, economics, and social class inequalities in the United States.
Given the highly subjective nature of this assignment, I would be a generous
grader to reinforce the idea that I wanted students to weigh the importance of
social class and socioeconomic origins only to increase their understanding of
public sector operations, versus expecting them to adopt any particular view on
the subject. Again, my role should be that of a teacher, not a preacher.
CONCLUSION
Were I to return to full-time teaching, I would draw on my lower
socioeconomic origins far more than I did during my career. I would stress to
students the importance of seeing the people they serve now and in the future
as more than “customers.” I would urge them to view these individuals as fellow
citizens whether the recipients are being regulated, assisted, defended, inspected,
advised, prosecuted, or even incarcerated. Again: Government is not a business,
and citizens are not customers. Should we serve the public as efficiently, effectively,
quickly, and politely as possible, the way the better profit-driven enterprises
would? Of course; but more important, as fellow citizens they also have a host of
legal and constitutional rights we are obligated to honor in attentive, respectful,
responsive, and protective ways, no matter their socioeconomic standing.
I would also remind students (if their life experiences have not yet taught
them) that bad things happen to good people. For every deadbeat or welfare
cheat, literally millions of Americans are doing their best, but they still need
help at some point. The latest statistics (“One in Fifteen,” 2011; Pugh, 2011)
indicate that some 46.2 million people (15.1% of the population) live below
the poverty line in America. Of these, 20.5 million (or 6.7% of the population)
are extremely poor—that is, they live on individual incomes of $5,570 or less
per year, or $11,157 per family of four. I would further encourage students to
consider how Americans born of lesser means will likely fare in our social and
political system, especially when it comes to their chances of earning a doctorate
and teaching public administration.
In many ways, my grandparents were locked into an inescapable economic
fate. They worked incredibly hard and lived with amazing frugality. Still,
Journal of Public Affairs Education 103