Poverty and the American Economy
Required Texts:
Bradley Schiller, The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination, 8th edition, Prentice Hall, 2001.
Jonathan Kozel, Amazing Grace, Crown Publishers, 1995. You should start to read Amazing Grace immediately and try to finish it within the first month of class.
Course Objectives:
This course examines poverty in the United States, emphasizing the experience of the past thirty years. It explores how poverty is measured, the underlying causes of poverty, and policies that might be used to combat poverty. Emphasis is given to the special problems of urban poverty and poverty among children.
Method of Instruction:
The course has a service learning format. Thus, it includes lectures, readings, classroom discussion, and weekly service in a poor community. We will be tutoring elementary school children (ages 6 to 10), helping them with reading, math and completion of homework. Central to the course is the idea of praxis: readings and class work helps us to understand the broader structures within which our service takes place, and reflections on the service cause us to reach new understandings of the classroom material that we cover. Ideally, this course will promote the acquisition of new knowledge and experiences that will contribute to personal transformation of the student, and a desire to work for social transformation that promotes justice and love. It is critical that each student participate in his or her own education.
Grades:
1. A weekly journal worth 10% in total. The weekly journal must be a critical reflection of what the student experiences and observes in the tutoring session. The entry should include how the experience relates to the material covered in class, questions that the experience raises that are related to the study of poverty, and personal/emotional reactions to the experience. These entries should be one to two typed pages, and will be collected at the start of class on the Thursday following the Tuesday tutoring, and will be marked down by ten percentage points (e.g., from 90% to 80%) for each day they are late.
2. A final 10 page paper worth 20%. The paper will tie together the weekly experiences, the readings and class discussions, and will be handed in on the last day of class. Final papers must be brought to the Writing Center before they are submitted to me. The paper and weekly journal will serve to satisfy the writing enriched requirements.
3. Two in class tests, each worth 25% of the final grade. There are no makeup tests except for legitimate and fully documented extenuating circumstances. Examples are athletic competitions in which a student must participate, and a serious illness. Students must notify me of their inability to take an exam in advance of the test whenever possible, and I reserve the right to determine what is legitimate. If a student misses an exam without a documented, valid excuse, the student's grade for that test will be automatically reduced by twenty five percentage points (e.g., from an 80% to a 55%). The dates for the midterms are 2/28/02 and 4/30/02.
4. Class participation accounts for 20% of the final grade and covers preparation, attendance, in class written reflections, and a willingness to contribute informed opinions on topics under discussion. Students are expected to attend all classes and must attend all tutoring sessions, unless they have a legitimate, documented excuse. Each three classes a student misses will cause their participation grade to fall by ten percentage points.. If a student simply attends class and does nothing more, the highest participation grade that can be earned is a 70%. If a student misses one tutoring session, his or her maximum final grade will be a "B". Missing two tutoring sessions will cause a student to fail the course.
Course Outline and Associated Readings
I. Studying Poverty in the University
A. Ellacuria, The University, Human Rights and the Poor Majority (reserve room).
B. Sobrino, The Cost of Speaking the Truth (reserve room).
C. Ellacuria, The Task of a Christian University (reserve room).
II. Why Care About Individuals Who are "Poor"
A. Economic Justice for All, pp. 44 62 (reserve room).
B. Preferential Option for the Poor (reserve room).
C. A Contract Response: John Rawls (reserve room).
III. Measuring the Amount and Degree of Poverty.
A. Schiller, chapter 1 and 2.
B. Federman, et al., What Does It Mean to be Poor in America? (reserve room)
C. Brooks Gunn and Duncan, The Effects of Poverty on Children (reserve room).
IV. Why Does Poverty Exist?
A. Overview.
1. Jennings, Persistent Poverty in the United States (reserve room).
2. Ranney, Class, Race, Gender and Poverty (reserve room).
B. The role of economic forces.
1. Schiller, chapters 3 and 4.
2. State of Working America (reserve room).
3. Kim, The Working Poor: Lousy Jobs or Lazy Workers? (reserve room).
C. The role of education.
1. Schiller, chapters 8 and 9.
2. Somebody's Children (reserve room).
D. The role of social organization: ghetto poverty and the "underclass" debate.
1. Schiller, chapter 7.
2. Gans, The Invention of the Underclass Label (reserve room).
3. Katz, Reframing the Underclass Debate (reserve room).
4. Franklin, White Uses of the Black Underclass (reserve room).
E. The role of government assistance: the welfare debate.
1. Schiller chapter 11, pages 193 to 205.
2. Polakow, Savage Distributions (reserve room).
V. Fighting Poverty.
A. Schiller, chapters 11, 12, 13, and 14.
B. Blank, Fighting Poverty: Lessons from Recent U.S. History (reserve room).
C. Children and Poverty: Analysis and Recommendations (reserve room).
