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

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David Schultz Johnson & Rivera, 2007; Kellar, 2005; Rice, 2007, 2008; White & Rice, 2005; Wyatt-Nichol & Antwi-Boasiako, 2008). Finally, the social equity scholarship, rooted in the first Minnowbrook Conference in 1968, has called on the field of public administration to add equity to efficiency when seeking to evaluate and understand the construction and implementation of public policy (Alvez & Timney, 2008; Frederickson, 2005, 2010; Gooden & Myers, 2004; Gooden & Wooldridge, 2007; Svara & Brunet, 2004). Yet a great silence surrounds class. It is rare today, especially in a world where Francis Fukuyama (2006) declared a generation ago that capitalism had won and Marx and communism lost, that class is mentioned or discussed. Politically, a candidate for office who raises the topic is accused of engaging in class warfare. Absent from the curriculum in public affairs courses are discussions of the role of class in America and how it affects almost every political choice and institution. Why is class so hidden? It is because the academy itself is trapped by it. Its faculty, administrators, and the effort to create a market-driven curriculum have led to the topic of class being glossed over and ignored. The academy, including those teaching public affairs, are increasingly detached from class issues, coming instead from the privileged background that Fitzgerald speaks of, bringing with them biases and perspectives that render them oblivious to it (Kniffen, 2007). Not all of us are snared by this class trap. I am part of a small but declining population of faculty in higher education—a first-generation faculty member growing up with blue-collar roots. This article tells my story. It describes my background and how it affects what I teach, research, and publish. In this article, I hope to use my experiences to highlight the problem of class bias in higher education and public affairs teaching. The thesis is simple: Much of American higher education is in danger of closing its doors to all but the privileged, shutting out both students and critical perspectives that should be heard. If the goal of education is to offer diverse perspectives as essential to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and to provide training to promote social mobility and advancement, this class bias compromises these objectives. WHO AM I? My Family Rousseau opens his Reveries of the Solitary Walker (1782/1979) by asking, “Who am I?” This is where my essay begins. Gadamer states that we perceive the world through our horizons (1986, pp. 238–239). We look at the world in the only way we can—through who we are as we are in our time and place. But each of us is also a narrative in history. We are the product of a genealogy—both in the traditional meaning and in the Foucaulian sense (Foucault, 1973). That genealogy includes a family narrative, and mine is working class. 68 Journal of Public Affairs Education
Blue-Collar Teaching Half of my family immigrated to America from Germany in 1876. My greatgrandfather was thrown out of that country because he was a union agitator. The other half are from Slovakia, coming to America about the same time. Once in America, both sides became farmers. Until my mother graduated high school in 1937, none of her family had ever gotten that far; most perhaps barely made it beyond grade or grammar school. My mother attended a nursing training program in a hospital when that was how one learned that profession before it required a college degree. She did a little nursing, but quit and did not work again until my father was ill and died young from cancer. She then became a cook at a retirement home. My father never made it past eighth grade. He dropped out early to support his mother after her husband died. My father served in the army during World War II, going AWOL because of persecution due to his German ancestry. My parents married during the war; he drove a cab in New York City until they left in the early 1950s to find a new life in upstate New York. The good life for my family was public service. My father worked in a state hospital laundry, but he had a second job as an orderly in a county nursing home. He worked seven days a week, nearly 70 hours. He did that until the work, plus a two-pack-a-day habit, killed him at age 61. I was 16 at the time. My mother then went to work as a cook; that lasted until she was 63 and died of breast cancer. I was 24. My father and family did real work. They lifted, grunted, and sweated. They cleaned other peoples’ clothes, fixed their meals, and tended to their bodily needs. My father often told me he worked hard so that I would not have to. It is a lesson I remember well, but it still affects me in terms of my work ethic. A Working-Class Childhood I grew up working-class Roman Catholic in a New Deal household. My parents voted for FDR, but they also supported Nelson Rockefeller. My family was union—Civil Service Employees Association. I remember in 1973, the year before my father died, that between his two jobs and the rent we received from the upstairs tenants in our two-family house, we grossed $10,000. I thought we were rich. I came of age during Vatican II, JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King Jr. From the Kennedys and my parents’ work, I learned about public service and the dignity of government helping others. From Vatican II and Pope Paul II, I learned the message of social justice. The Church was telling me to go change the world, help the less fortunate, and serve others. The Sermon on the Mount was my inspiration. I attended public schools and after-school religious education. I was a sickly boy, and no one ever thought I would survive childhood. From my mother I inherited a blood disease. The main symptoms are anemia, a compromised immune system, and an enlarged spleen. My mother, a medical guinea pig Journal of Public Affairs Education 69
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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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FROM THE GUEST EDITOR FROM THE GUES
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FROM THE GUEST EDITOR A SYMPOSIUM I
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on other fronts, certainly it can h
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Picasso, P. (1937). Guernica. Pictu
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Page 55 and 56: Shaw, G. B. (1928). The intelligent
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Page 111 and 112: REFERENCES Ashwander v. Tennessee V
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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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