Labor Of Learning

Claims the rebellion of poor and working class children against school authority prepares them for working class jobs.

This book is about the end of an era in education. It argues that schooling as we know it will cease to exist and be replaced with something else.

Learning to Labor in New Times foregrounds nine essays which re-examine the work of noted sociologist Paul Willis, 25 years after the publication of his seminal Learning to Labor, one of the most frequently cited and assigned texts in the cultural studies and social foundations of education.

Collective bargaining in the public schools of the nation has its legal roots in the industrial labor model fashioned in the 1930s out of labor strife between union organizers and private businesses. This industrial union labor model was transplanted almost wholesale into the public sector over fifty years ago when teachers, fire and police personnel were granted the legislative right to collectively bargain their wages, benefits, and terms and conditions of employment in most states. What impact has this industrial model had on public education and on the relationship between teachers and administrators? Labor Relations in Education explores unions and collective bargaining in the public schools of America. The history of the laws, the politics of the response to collective bargaining and unions, and the practices of bargaining and managing a contract are explored in this volume. Changes that may move labor relations into professional relations and away from the industrial labor union model and diminish the schism that exists between educators are discussed. A fully developed simulation is included to employ the practices and concepts discussed in the book.

Over the past few decades, US business and industry have been transformed by the advances and redundancies produced by the knowledge economy. The workplace has changed, and much of the work differs from that performed by previous generations. Can human capital accumulation in the United States keep pace with the evolving demands placed on it, and how can the workforce of tomorrow acquire the skills and competencies that are most in demand? Education, Skills, and Technical Change explores various facets of these questions and provides an overview of educational attainment in the United States and the channels through which labor force skills and education affect GDP growth. Contributors to this volume focus on a range of educational and training institutions and bring new data to bear on how we understand the role of college and vocational education and the size and nature of the skills gap. This work links a range of research areas—such as growth accounting, skill development, higher education, and immigration—and also examines how well students are being prepared for the current and future world of work.

Academic Labor beyond the College Classroom initiates a scholarly and professional conversation, calling upon faculty to participate in, reimagine, and transform their institutional and professional work to look beyond just teaching and research. Chapters in this contributed volume offer case studies, strategies, and exemplars of how faculty can re-engage in institutional service, mentoring, governance, and administrative duties to advance equity efforts at all levels of the university, calling for what Dr. Nancy Chick names in the Foreword as a "scholarship of influence." This book draws from a diverse range of methodologies and disciplines, issuing an invitation to faculty "across the divide" of their specific college, school, or corner of the university into cross-conversations and partnerships for positive change.

'Linking Education Policy to Labor Market Outcomes' examines current research and new evidence from Ghana and Pakistan representative of two of the poorest regions of the world to assess how education can increase income and help people move out of poverty. This study indicates that in addition to early investments in cognitive and noncognitive skills which produce a high return and lower the cost of later educational investment by making learning at later ages more efficient quality, efficiency, and linkages to the broader macro-economic context also matter. Education and relevant skills are still the key determinants of good labor market outcomes for individuals. However, education policies aimed at improving skills will have a limited effect on the incomes of that skilled workforce or on the performance of a national economy if other policies that increase the demand for these skills are not in place. For education to contribute to national economic growth, policies should aim at improving the quality of education by spending efficiently and by adapting the basic and postbasic curricula to develop the skills increasingly demanded on the global labor market, including critical thinking, problem solving, social behavior, and information technology.

How ed tech was born: Twentieth-century teaching machines--from Sidney Pressey's mechanized test-giver to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Contrary to popular belief, ed tech did not begin with videos on the internet. The idea of technology that would allow students to "go at their own pace" did not originate in Silicon Valley. In Teaching Machines, education writer Audrey Watters offers a lively history of predigital educational technology, from Sidney Pressey's mechanized positive-reinforcement provider to B. F. Skinner's behaviorist bell-ringing box. Watters shows that these machines and the pedagogy that accompanied them sprang from ideas--bite-sized content, individualized instruction--that had legs and were later picked up by textbook publishers and early advocates for computerized learning. Watters pays particular attention to the role of the media--newspapers, magazines, television, and film--in shaping people's perceptions of teaching machines as well as the psychological theories underpinning them. She considers these machines in the context of education reform, the political reverberations of Sputnik, and the rise of the testing and textbook industries. She chronicles Skinner's attempts to bring his teaching machines to market, culminating in the famous behaviorist's efforts to launch Didak 101, the "pre-verbal" machine that taught spelling. (Alternate names proposed by Skinner include "Autodidak," "Instructomat," and "Autostructor.") Telling these somewhat cautionary tales, Watters challenges what she calls "the teleology of ed tech"--the idea that not only is computerized education inevitable, but technological progress is the sole driver of events.

From Katherine Newman, award-winning author of No Shame in My Game, and sociologist Hella Winston, a sharp and irrefutable call to reenergize this nation's long-neglected system of vocational training After decades of off-shoring and downsizing that have left blue collar workers obsolete and stranded, the United States is now on the verge of an industrial renaissance. But we don't have a skilled enough labor pool to fill the positions that will be created, which are in many cases technically demanding and require specialized skills. A decades-long series of idealistic educational policies with the expressed goal of getting every student to go to college has left a generation of potential workers out of the system. Touted as a progressive, egalitarian institution providing opportunity even to those with the greatest need, the American secondary school system has in fact deepened existing inequalities. We can do better, argue acclaimed sociologists Katherine Newman and Hella Winston. Taking a page from the successful experience of countries like Germany and Austria, where youth unemployment is a mere 7%, they call for a radical reevaluation of the idea of vocational training, long discredited as an instrument of tracking. The United States can prepare a new, high-performance labor force if we revamp our school system to value industry apprenticeship and rigorous technical education. By doing so, we will not only be able to meet the growing demand for skilled employees in dozens of sectors where employers decry the absence of well trained workers -- we will make the American Dream accessible to all.

“A superb new understanding of the dynamic economy as a learning society, one that goes well beyond the usual treatment of education, training, and R&D.”—Robert Kuttner, author of The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy Since its publication Creating a Learning Society has served as an effective tool for those who advocate government policies to advance science and technology. It shows persuasively how enormous increases in our standard of living have been the result of learning how to learn, and it explains how advanced and developing countries alike can model a new learning economy on this example. Creating a Learning Society: Reader’s Edition uses accessible language to focus on the work’s central message and policy prescriptions. As the book makes clear, creating a learning society requires good governmental policy in trade, industry, intellectual property, and other important areas. The text’s central thesis—that every policy affects learning—is critical for governments unaware of the innovative ways they can propel their economies forward. “Profound and dazzling. In their new book, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald study the human wish to learn and our ability to learn and so uncover the processes that relate the institutions we devise and the accompanying processes that drive the production, dissemination, and use of knowledge . . . This is social science at its best.”—Partha Dasgupta, University of Cambridge “An impressive tour de force, from the theory of the firm all the way to long-term development, guided by the focus on knowledge and learning . . . This is an ambitious book with far-reaching policy implications.”—Giovanni Dosi, director, Institute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna “[A] sweeping work of macroeconomic theory.”—Harvard Business Review