Abstracts
Abstract
In the US, the value of liberal arts is in question as neo-liberal reformers push for a more instrumentalist form of higher education. Older traditions of worker education, however, along with more recent university-based labour studies programs, offer a compelling counter-narrative concerning the social and political purpose of higher education. Taking its cue from C.W. Mills’ notion of the sociological imagination, labour studies has the potential not only to re-energize the transformational mission of popular worker education, but reclaim the idea of higher education as a public good.
Résumé
Aux États-Unis, la pertinence des programmes en arts libéraux est remise en question, car les réformateurs néolibéraux préconisent une forme d’éducation supérieure plus efficace. Or, des courants plus anciens de formation des travailleurs, ainsi que des programmes universitaires en études du travail récents, proposent une alternative intéressante en ce qui a trait à la mission sociale et politique de l’éducation supérieure. Lorsqu’ils s’inspirent de la thèse de l’imagination sociologique de C.W. Mills, les programmes d’études du travail ont non seulement le potentiel de revitaliser la mission transformationnelle de la formation populaire des travailleurs, mais peuvent mettre en valeur l’idée que l’éducation supérieure puisse être bénéfique pour le public.
Download the article in PDF to read it.
Download
Appendices
Note biographique
RICHARD WELLS is an Assistant Professor of Labor Studies and Social Theory at The Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies, Empire State College, State University of New York.
Bibliographie
- American Association of University Professors (AAUP). (n.d.). Statement on the Spellings commission report. Retrieved from http://www.aaup.org/our-work/government-relations/GRarchive/Spellings/Statement
- Altenbaugh, R.J. (1983). The children and instruments of a militant labor progressivism: Brookwood Labor College and the American labor college movement of the 1920s and 1930s. History of Education Quarterly, 23, 395-411.
- Altenbaugh, R.J. (1990). Education for struggle: The American labor colleges of the 1920s and 1930s. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
- Bacon, D. (2004, January). Class warfare. The Nation. Retrieved from http://www.thenation.com/article/class-warfare-0
- Brenner N., & Theodore, N. (2002). Cities and the geographies of “actually existing neoliberalism.” In N. Brenner & N. Theodore (Eds.), Spaces of neoliberalism: Urban restructuring in North America and Western Europe (pp. 2-32). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
- Delbanco, A. (2012). College: What it was, is, and should be. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Deresiewicz, W. (2011, May). Faulty towers: The crisis of higher education. The Nation. Retrieved from http://www.thenation.com/article/160410/faulty-towers-crisis-higher-education#axzz2aqIOapt5
- Dewey, J. (1916/2011). Democracy and education. Simon and Brown.
- Dwyer, R. (1977). Workers’ education, labor education, labor studies: An historical delineation. Review of Educational Research,47, 179-207.
- Erlich, M. & Grabelsky, J. (2005). Standing at a crossroads: The building trades in the twenty-first century [Electronic version]. Retrieved from Cornell University, ILR school site: http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/281/
- Ferrall, V. (2011). Liberal arts on the brink. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Flaherty, C. (2013, January 9). Making the case for adjuncts. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/09/adjunct-leaders-consider-strategies-force-change
- Folbre, N. (2010). Saving State U: Why we must fix public higher education. New York, NY: The New Press.
- Foster, J.B. (2011, July-August). Education and the structural crisis of capitalism: The US case. The Monthly Review, 63(3), 6-37.
- Fraser, R., Merrill, M., Ramdeholl, D., Szymanksi, S., & Wells, R. (2011). The Van Arsdale Center: A staging ground for action. In D. Amory, L. Matthews, E. Michelson, M.C. Powers & S. Szymanski (Eds.), Revisiting Boyer: Exploring the scholarly work of Empire State College faculty (pp. 47-51). Saratoga Springs, NY: SUNY Empire State College Print Shop.
- Freeman, J. (2000). Working class New York: Life and labor since World War Two. New York, NY: The New Press.
- Gardner, L. & Young, R. (2013, March). California’s move toward moocs sends shockwaves, but key questions remain unanswered. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/A-Bold-Move-Toward-MOOCs-Sends/137903/
- Ginsburg, B. (2011). The fall of the faculty: The rise of the all-administrative university and why it matters. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
- Greenhouse, S. (2013, September 13). At labor group, a sense of a broader movement. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/business/at-afl-cio-a-sense-of-a-broader-labor-movement.html?pagewanted=all
- Habermas, J. (1991). The Structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Harry Van Arsdale Center for Labor Studies. (2013) Labor writes: At work. Saratoga Springs, NY: SUNY Empire State College Print Shop.
- Harvey, D. (1995). Militant particularism and global ambition: The conceptual politics of place, space, and environment in the work of Raymond Williams. Social Text, 42 (Spring), 69-98.
- Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
- Heller, N. (2013, May). Laptop u. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/20/130520fa_fact_heller?printable=true¤tPage=all
- Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T (2002). The Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosphical fragments. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
- Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. B. Bell, J. Gaventa, & J. Peters (Eds.), Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
- Gangi, R., Schiraldi, V., & Zeidenberg, J. (1998). New York state of mind? Education vs. prison spending in the Empire State, 1988-1998. Washington DC: Justice Policy Institute. Retrieved from http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/new_york.pdf
- Kelderman, E. (2012, March). State and local spending on higher education reached a new 25-year low in 2011. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/131221/
- Lewin, T. (2013, June 19). Online classes fuel a campus debate. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/education/online-classes-fuel-a-campus-debate.html?ref=elearning&_r=0
- Martin, J. V. & Cohen, H. (2011). Construction labor costs in New York City: A moment of opportunity. New York, NY: Center for Urban Innovation, Regional Planning Association. Retrieved from http://library.rpa.org/pdf/RPA-CUI-Construction-Costs.pdf
- McDermott, C. (2013, July). US higher education system perpetuates white privilege, report says. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/US-Higher-Education-System/140631/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
- McIlroy, J., & Westwood, S. (1993). Border country: Raymond Williams in adult education. Leicester, UK: National Institute for Continuing Adult Education.
- Michaels, W. B. (2006). The trouble with diversity: How we learned to love identity and ignore inequality. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.
- Mills, C. W. (1959/2000). The sociological imagination. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
- Mills, C. W. (2008). Mass society and liberal education. In (J. H. Summers, Ed.), Politics of truth: Selected writing of C.W. Mills (pp. 107-124). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
- Mumper, M. (2003). The future of college access: The declining role of public higher education in promoting equal opportunity. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,585, 97-117.
- New York City Comptroller. (2012) Income inequality in New York City. Retrieved from New York City Comptroller’s Office website: http://comptroller.nyc.gov/wp-content/uploads/documents/NYC_IncomeInequality_v17.pdf
- Newfield, C. (2011). The unmaking of the public university: The forty year assault on the middle class. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Nussbaum, M. (2012). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Peck, J., & Tickell, A. (2002). Neoliberalizing space. In N. Brenner & N. Theodore (Eds.), Spaces of neoliberalism: Urban restructuring in North America and Western Europe (pp. 33-57). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
- Ramdeholl, D. & Wells, R. (2012). The world as it could be: Class, race and gender for working class students. Proceedings of theAdult Education Research Council, 251-257. Retrieved from http://www.adulterc.org/Proceedings/2012/papers/ramdeholl.pdf
- Rice, A. (2012, September 11). Anatomy of a campus coup. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/magazine/teresa-sullivan-uva-ouster.html?pagewanted=all
- Roberts, S. (2013, September 19). Poverty rate is up in New York City, and income gap is wide, census data show. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/nyregion/poverty-rate-in-city-rises-to-21-2.html
- Roche, M. V. (2010). Why choose the liberal arts? South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
- Rose, J. (1989). The workers in the workers’ educational association, 1903-1950. Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 21, 591-608.
- Roth, M. S. (2012, September 5). Learning as freedom. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/opinion/john-deweys-vision-of-learning-as-freedom.html?_r=0
- Schmidt, P. (2011, November). Unions are unreliable allies of labor-studies programs, scholars say. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/Unions-Are-Unreliable-Allies/129851/
- Schuster, J. & Finklestein, M. (2008). The American faculty: The restructuring of academic work and careers. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Shorris, E. (1997). New American blues: A journey through poverty to democracy. New York, NY: Norton.
- Simmel, G. (1950). The metropolis and mental Life. In K.H. Wolff (Ed.), The sociology of Georg Simmel (pp. 409-424). New York, NY: Free Press.
- Steck, H. (2003). Corporatization of the university: Seeking conceptual clarity. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,585, 79-83.
- Szymanski, S. & Wells, R. (2013). Labor studies: Redefining a college education. In D. Ramdeholl, (Ed.). New directions in adult learning and continuing education: Decentering the ivory tower of academia (pp. 67-76). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
- Tarlau, R. (2011). Education and labor in tension: Contemporary debates about education in the US labor movement. Labor Studies Journal, 36, 363-387.
- US Department of Education. (2006). A test of leadership: Charting the future of US higher education: A report commissioned by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. Washington, D.C.: US Department of Education. Retrieved at http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/reports/final-report.pdf
- Weissman, J. (2013, March). A truly devastating graph on higher education spending. The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/print/2013/03/a-truly-devastating-graph-on-state-higher-education-spending/274199/
- Zweig, M. (2000). The working class majority: America’s best kept secret. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.
Appendices
Note biographique
RICHARD WELLS est professeur adjoint en études du travail et théorie sociale au Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies, Empire State College, State University of New York.