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

Blue-Collar Teaching
from physics. So did being average in math. I majored in political science and
philosophy. The school was wonderful; but often I saw students coming from
affluent backgrounds, with parents who were doctors, lawyers, or from other
professional backgrounds. They all knew one another and drew upon their
connections to find summer jobs, if they wanted to work, or to score internships.
They had time to go to parties; I had to go to work. These students could afford
vacations, had the resources to study abroad, and generally did not have to work.
It seemed so effortless for them. I thought often, “What if I had the resources
and opportunities they had; what could I do? Certainly more than they
were accomplishing.”
My classes were dominated by course titles that had the words Marx,
Revolution, or Political Economy in them. I took courses and wrote papers about
the underclass. Perhaps the most significant and influential course I took was
a philosophy class where we spent the entire term reading one book—John
Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. The book crystallized so much for me. The Difference
Principle—inequalities are arbitrary unless they work to the advantage of the
least advantaged first—reinforced in me a perspective about social justice and
class that paralleled my Catholic, working-class roots. Government, social
programs, and political philosophy needed to examine life from the perspective
of the least advantaged.
Graduate School and Work: Round One
When I applied to graduate school, I could not afford the application
fees and received a waiver from schools. I am not sure that is still possible. I
got accepted to a state school—Rutgers University—to work toward a PhD
in political science. A full scholarship paved my way. I also won a Lehman
Fellowship to attend any graduate school in New York—I was the first to win
one from my school—but had to turn it down because I did not know I had
won it until too late.
Rutgers was terrific. But I stayed 2 years only, for my masters. I returned home
to tend to a dying mother and take a job working in city hall. Between my first
and second years at Rutgers, I returned home to work on a political campaign for a
woman running for mayor. She asked me 12 times to take a job with her if she got
elected. I said no 11 times. I left school to become a director of code enforcement
at the ripe old age of 23. I enforced city and state housing laws and set up homeless
shelters for patients freed from the New York mental institutions during the early
1980s. I lived and worked in public service during the Reagan era when we were
told government was the problem, not the solution.
I left government to work for a community action agency funded in part by
the Office of Economic Opportunity and by the Dorothy Day fund, courtesy of
the Campaign for Human Development and the Catholic Diocese of New York.
I was a planner and organizer, and my job was to help the poor.
Journal of Public Affairs Education 71