This Fine Place So Far from Home

This Fine Place So Far from Home
Author: C.L. Dews
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2010-06-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1439904480

Affecting stories of faculty and graduate students from working-class on their struggles in academia.

This Fine Place So Far from Home

This Fine Place So Far from Home
Author: C.L. Dews
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 1995-04-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781566392914

These autobiographical and analytical essays by a diverse group of professors and graduate students from working-class families reveal an academic world in which "blue-collar work is invisible." Describing conflict and frustration, the contributors expose a divisive middle-class bias in the university setting. Many talk openly about how little they understood about the hierarchy and processes of higher education, while others explore how their experiences now affect their relationships with their own students. They all have in common the anguish of choosing to hide their working-class background, to keep the language of home out of the classroom and the ideas of school away from home. These startlingly personal stories highlight the fissure between a working-class upbringing and the more privileged values of the institution.

A Shot Story

A Shot Story
Author: David Borkowski
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2015-08-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0823266001

The botched robbery didn’t do it. Neither did the three gunshots. It wasn’t until he was administered last rites that David Borkowski realized he was about to die, at age fifteen. A Shot Story: From Juvie to Ph.D. is a riveting account of how being shot saved his life and helped a juvenile delinquent become an esteemed English professor. Growing up in a working-class section of Staten Island, David and his friends thought they had all the answers: They knew where to hang out without being hassled, where to get high, and what to do if the cops showed up. But when David and his friend called in a pizza order so they could rob the delivery man, things didn’t turn out as they’d planned. Staring down the barrel of a gun, David and his friend panicked and took off as the cop fired. Convinced the cop was shooting harmless “salt” bullets, David darted through lawns as the cop gave chase. Much later, when David was bleeding to death, did the cops realize they had hit one of their own—the son of a fellow cop. Borderline illiterate at the time of the shooting, David took his future into his own hands and found salvation in books. But his attempts to improve his life were stymied by lack of familial support. Bound on all sides by adults who had no faith in his ability to learn or to succeed, David persevered and earned his Ph.D.. Funny and poignant, but always honest and reflective, A Shot Story tracks David Borkowski’s life before and after the “accident” and tells how his having been a rather unremarkable student may have been a blessing in disguise. A wonderful addition to the working-class narrative genre, A Shot Story presents a gripping account of the silences of working-class culture as well as the male subculture of Staten Island. Through his heartfelt memoir, Borkowski explores the universal lesson of turning a wrong into a rite of passage.

Narratives on Becoming

Narratives on Becoming
Author: Emilie Clucas Leaderman
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2021-07-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1648024823

Learning and identity development are lifetime processes of becoming. The construction of self, of interest to scholars and practitioners in adult development and adult learning, is an ongoing process, with the self both forming and being formed by lived experience in privileged and oppressive contexts. Intersecting identities and the power dynamics within them shape how learners define themselves and others and how they make meaning of their experiences in the world. The series, I Am What I Become: Constructing Identities as Lifelong Learners, is an insightful and diverse collection of empirical research and narrative essays in identity development, adult development, and adult learning. The purpose of this series is to publish contributions that highlight the intimate and intricate connections between learning and identity. The series aims to assist our readers to understand and nurture adults who are always in the process of becoming. We hope to promote reflection and research at the intersection of identity and adult learning at any point across the adult lifespan. The rich array of qualitative research designs as well as autobiographic and narrative essays transform and expand our understanding of the lived experience of people both like us and unlike us, from the U.S. and beyond. Narratives on Becoming: Identity and Lifelong Learning, Volume Three of the series, explores a myriad of ways that authors’ personal and professional growth has influenced identity development. These chapters provide insights into the intersectional identities and learning of writers. Drawing from the multiple paths that comprise the journey of lifelong learning, these authors present powerful stories that identify the ways relationships, environments, culture, travel, and values shape their identities; use literacy, teaching, and learning as vehicles for experimenting with new identities, negotiate multiple identities, contexts, and transitions involved in becoming, and construct meaning. Through their narrative essays and ethnographic/autobiographical accounts, the authors in this volume illuminate the power of transformational learning during life-changing events and transitions. Praise for: Narratives on Becoming: Identity and Lifelong Learning "The third volume in the I Am What I Become series, Narratives on Becoming: Identity and Lifelong Learning invites readers into the lives of educators from around the world. This book includes important narratives from students, secondary educators, and post-secondary educators alike, highlighting how race, class, gender, and a wide range of other intersectional identities shape the diverse lived experiences of educators and their students. This volume also serves as an important reminder for all of us that the learning process continues across a lifetime and transcends the limits of the traditional classroom." Brian Bicknell, President Manchester Community College "We all pay lip service to the importance of lifelong learning, but what is it exactly and how does it come about? The connections between identity and learning are intriguing and complex, especially when it comes to adult learners. In this very thoughtfully organized collection, researchers present qualitative and narrative studies, along with personal narratives, to explore identity development in formal and informal learning environments. Contributions from varied cultural contexts, most with powerful and moving stories to tell, provide insight into how identity, meaning-making, and adult learning and development intersect and influence each other. Psychologists, scholars and educators interested in identity development and meaning-making will find inspiration and fresh understanding in this innovative and enlightening series." Ruthellen Josselson, Author Paths to Fulfillment: Women’s Search for Meaning and Identity "This innovative series on adult development is inspiring and substantive. We hear voices from the margins and stories of courage. We read identity-formation narratives by young adults and experienced professionals who share impressive capacities for transparency, vulnerability, and self-reflection. Many of the narratives are embedded in rigorous qualitative research that highlights diverse ways that identity is shaped through social positionality, lived experience, the quest for individuation, and willingness to encounter life as a dynamic learning process." Jared D. Kass, Lesley University, Author, A Person-Centered Approach to Psychospiritual Maturation: Mentoring Psychological Resilience and Inclusive Community in Higher Education

Leaps of Faith

Leaps of Faith
Author: Anne C. Benoit
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2018-09-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 164113464X

As discourses and programming to support diversity and inclusion across higher education are intensifying, Leaps of Faith: Stories from Working-Class Academics presents a collection of narratives that highlights the “on-the-ground” experiences of working-class students and scholars. These are stories of negotiation, transition, and challenge. These are stories of struggle. These are stories of beating the odds. The early works of Ryan and Sackrey (1984), Sennett and Cobb (1993), and Dews and Law (1996) raised the voices of working-class academics, and the subject of class in higher education has gained traction—especially with the increasing focus on the enrollment and persistence of first-generation college students. This project situates contributor stories in adult learning and development, with the goal of enhancing dialogue and increasing understanding of a still-hidden population in the academy. Leaps of Faith: Stories from Working-Class Academics is a compelling collection of reflections from working-class students and scholars from diverse demographic and geographic backgrounds who are currently navigating various transition points and career stages. Leaps of Faith: Stories from Working-Class Academics presents the strengths and gifts of the scholar-contributors and the opportunity to “turn the stories” through accessible and meaningful reflective “telling.” The collection concludes with a discussion of salient implications for working-class students and scholars, those who support their learning and development, and higher education institutions and programs.

Reflections from the Wrong Side of the Tracks

Reflections from the Wrong Side of the Tracks
Author: Stephen L. Muzzatti
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0742535118

The essays in this collection challenge the predominant image of working class people in higher education by providing a series of analyses and personal commentaries from a wide range of working class academics. Reflections From the Wrong Side of the Tracks imparts a critical and substantial narrative about what it means to be from the working class and work in academe.

Educational Metamorphoses

Educational Metamorphoses
Author: Jane Roland Martin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2007
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780742546721

A preeminent philosopher of education in the United States, Jane Roland Martin challenges conventional wisdom that education consists of small, incremental changes. Using case studies of personal transformations, or metamorphoses, Martin examines Malcolm X, Shaw's Eliza Doolittle, Victor of Aveyron and others to demonstrate how education is a fundamental determinant of the human condition.

Why Education Is Useless

Why Education Is Useless
Author: Daniel Cottom
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-04-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 081220168X

Education is useless because it destroys our common sense, because it isolates us from the rest of humanity, because it hardens our hearts and swells our heads. Bookish persons have long been subjects of suspicion and contempt and nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the United States during the past twenty years. Critics of education point to the Nazism of Martin Heidegger, for example, to assert the inhumanity of highly learned people; they contend that an oppressive form of identity politics has taken over the academy and complain that the art world has been overrun by culturally privileged elitists. There are always, it seems, far more reasons to disparage the ivory tower than to honor it. The uselessness of education, particularly in the humanities, is a pervasive theme in Western cultural history. With wit and precision, Why Education Is Useless engages those who attack learning by focusing on topics such as the nature of humanity, love, beauty, and identity as well as academic scandals, identity politics, multiculturalism, and the corporatization of academe. Asserting that hostility toward education cannot be dismissed as the reaction of barbarians, fools, and nihilists, Daniel Cottom brings a fresh perspective to all these topics while still making the debates about them comprehensible to those who are not academic insiders. A brilliant and provocative work of cultural argument and analysis, Why Education Is Useless brings in materials from literature, philosophy, art, film, and other fields and proceeds from the assumption that hostility to education is an extremely complex phenomenon, both historically and in contemporary American life. According to Cottom, we must understand the perdurable appeal of this antagonism if we are to have any chance of recognizing its manifestations—and countering them. Ranging in reference from Montaigne to George Bush, from Sappho to Timothy McVeigh, Why Education Is Useless is a lively investigation of a notion that has persisted from antiquity through the Renaissance and into the modern era, when the debate over the relative advantages of a liberal and a useful education first arose. Facing head on the conception of utility articulated in the nineteenth century by John Stuart Mill, and directly opposing the hostile conceptions of inutility that have been popularized in recent decades by such ideologues as Allan Bloom, Harold Bloom, and John Ellis, Cottom contends that education must indeed be "useless" if it is to be worthy of its name.

Moral Issues in Global Perspective - Volume 2: Human Diversity and Equality - Second Edition

Moral Issues in Global Perspective - Volume 2: Human Diversity and Equality - Second Edition
Author: Christine Koggel
Publisher: Broadview Press
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2006-03-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1551117487

Now available in three thematic volumes, the second edition of Moral Issues in Global Perspective is a collection of the newest and best articles on current moral issues by moral and political theorists from around the globe. Each volume seeks to challenge the standard approaches to morality and moral issues shaped by Western liberal theory and to extend the inquiry beyond the context of North America. Covering a broad range of issues and arguments, this collection includes critiques of traditional liberal accounts of rights, justice, and moral values, while raising questions about the treatment of disadvantaged groups within and across societies affected by globalization. Providing new perspectives on issues such as war and terrorism, reproduction, euthanasia, censorship, and the environment, each volume of Moral Issues in Global Perspective incorporates work by race, class, feminist, and disability theorists. Human Diversity and Equality, the second of the three volumes, examines issues of equality and difference and the effects, within and across borders, of kinds of discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, class, and sexual orientation. Nine essays are new, four of which were written especially for this volume. Moral Issues in Global Perspective is available in three separate volumes—Moral and Political Theory, Human Diversity and Equality, and Moral Issues.

Cultural Capital, Identity, and Social Mobility

Cultural Capital, Identity, and Social Mobility
Author: Mick Matthys
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2012
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0415510279

This qualitative study explores the meaning of working-class origin in the life and career of university graduates. Matthys approaches social mobility as a trajectory of identity construction in which different classes are integrated, and uses the notion of identity capital to interpret and discuss the meaning of the individual drive in social mobility.