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

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Cheryl Simrell King I did not play a musical instrument. I was acutely aware of the effects of gender, that being a woman significantly affected my experiences, but I was not aware that my class origins were also profoundly important. Class was invisible to me, as it is to most in our culture. Ironically, though, I think class is a far more important variable than is sex/gender, as it relates to my experiences. In the field of public administration, we have been willing and able to talk about, and explore the effects of, sex/gender on our experiences and our work environments; but we did not (and still do not) talk about the invisible variable of class. THE INVISIBLE AMERICANS In 1994, Lillian Rubin wrote about working-class families, calling them “invisible Americans.” She says, “Over the long haul, the denial of their class position leads to a confused and contradictory social identity that leaves working-class people riven with status anxiety and impacts their ability to join together and act in their own behalf” (p. 30). As Rubin noted in the early 1990s, although socially and politically working-class families are invisible, they are, potentially, the single largest interest group in the country. These are men and women, the largest part of the American workforce, employed at lower levels in production, health, and the service sectors of the economy; workers whose education is limited, whose mobility options are severely restricted, and who usually work for an hourly versus a weekly wage. These men and women do not tap many public resources; they reap minimal benefit from government programs for the poor or from the huge government subsidies for the rich (or, even, the vast government subsidy to middle-class folks: the mortgage interest tax deduction). They live life on the edge. As Rubin (1994, p. 31) states, “any unexpected event…threatens to throw them into the abyss.” For example, my sister’s husband, a corrections officer, has been out of work for the past few years—on temporary disability because of an altercation with an inmate—and has since lost his job. My sister, a care provider working in a home for developmentally disabled adults, was her household’s sole provider. As I was writing this, I learned she had just lost her job. The family is now without an income or health insurance. Health insurance is particularly important because of her husband’s injury and because she suffers from the same chronic condition that led to my brother’s colorectal cancer. My sister and her husband have one car with over 100,000 miles on it, and they cannot afford the required regular maintenance. Therefore, the car has frequent, oftentimes serious, mechanical problems. There is no public transportation in their small town—car trouble means a transportation struggle. So, the car gets fixed, and rent or some other need is postponed. And stress levels increase. They are always living life on the edge; any small thing could throw them over. In his germinal 1989 article on working-class students, “If Rocky Goes to College: Dilemmas of Working-Class College Students,” Howard Baker 56 Journal of Public Affairs Education
What’s a Girl Like You captured the essence of the struggle of working-class students at that time—an essence that remains true today. The article informed college and university psychiatric care providers about the presenting problems of working-class (or first-generation) students. 2 In the film Rocky, the working-class character from the streets of Philadelphia, played by Sylvester Stallone, repeatedly says, “I do not want to be just another bum on the block.” In his article, Baker asked, what if Rocky went to college instead of choosing to fight his way out of his destiny? According to Baker, and true to my own personal experiences, unlike their middle and upper-middle class peers, working class students…almost certainly begin a process of changing social class… which will complicate the lives of these students, burdening them with impediments to both academic success and psychological development. These added challenges will, moreover, continue once they graduate and enter the business and adult social worlds. (1989, p.70) As many first-generation students know, the price for social advancement can be high. As Rubin (1977) states, blue-collar families often live in “worlds of pain.” Much of this pain centers on jobs that are often repetitive, boring, dangerous, and sometimes demeaning. The family structure is hierarchical; the father (if he is in the household) is at the head and everyone must show him respect, which usually means unquestioning obedience and not challenging the illusion of his position atop the heap. Whether the family is activist and the kids “red-diaper babies” (children of the working-class activist/union/communist movements of the 1950s and 1960s) or offspring of “radical hillbillies” (workingclass people from Appalachia, mostly miners, who became radicalized through unions and similar organizations; see King & Zanetti, 2005), the authority lines in most working-class families are remarkably alike. Echoing the lack of collaboration and democracy often found in blue- or pink-collar workplaces, the structure at home is rarely collaborative or democratic. Women and children are submissive to the titular head. If that authority is questioned or potentially threatened, all kinds of hell can rain down on family members. And, while the heads of working-class families often want their children to do better than they—to succeed, to go to college—a college student in the family can be perceived as a potential threat to the tenuous authority of the family system. A college student in the family may also threaten the efficiency that comes with sameness that many working-class family systems require. As Baker (1989) states: Perhaps, most important, in many families there is little possibility for individualized responsiveness…normative thinking and behavior are necessary for daily functioning. Efficiency is necessary; things work most smoothly if everyone has similar tastes, interests and values. (p. 82) Journal of Public Affairs Education 57
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JPAE VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1 JOURNAL OF
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Journal of Public Affairs Education
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FROM THE EDITOR In the symposium in
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NASPAA Presidential Address Annual
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Leading by Example: Modeling Global
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Page 15 and 16: FROM THE GUEST EDITOR FROM THE GUES
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Page 19 and 20: on other fronts, certainly it can h
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Page 23 and 24: A View from the 50th Street Gate on
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Page 35 and 36: Class Rooms Kenneth Oldfield Univer
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Page 55 and 56: Shaw, G. B. (1928). The intelligent
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Page 95 and 96: Moving Forward My father married my
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Page 111 and 112: REFERENCES Ashwander v. Tennessee V
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics:
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Many researchers have explored the
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LITERATURE REVIEW Techniques in Tea
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics b
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics T
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics l
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics i
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Table 1. Downloads of Papers at Sel
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Figure 2. Expanded Model of Researc
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics o
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Figure 3. Expanded Model of Researc
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics L
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics o
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Felbinger, C. L., Holzer, M., & Whi
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Snee, R. D. (1993). What’s missin
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Are They Connected? Exploring Acade
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Exploring Academic and Social Netwo
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Figure 2. Career Advice Network Fig
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Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of
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network density, and network recipr
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Figure 5. Academic, Career Advice,
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Open Access Digital Repository: Sha
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Sharing Student Research with the W
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Table 1. Downloads of Papers at Sel
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Table 2. Top 10 Most Downloaded App
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Analysts also determined the number
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Topical categories. As shown in Tab
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negative impact on ARP downloads (
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Knowledge and Skills for Policy Mak
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Stories from Local Public Managers
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and writing the proposal for the co
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Another echoes: Stories from Local
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I think communication is one of the
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Creating Quality Online Course Desi
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it was achieved. The assessment of
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Fulbright Program for Foreign Stude
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Review of Moral Controversies in Am
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application of those foundations to
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Journal of Public Affairs Education
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Information for Contributors The Jo
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