Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality

John Marsh

ISBN 10: 1583672435 / ISBN 13: 9781583672433

Published by Monthly Review Press, 2011

About this Item

Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00082306826

Bibliographic Details

Title: Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or ...

Publisher: Monthly Review Press

Publication Date: 2011

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis:

In Class Dismissed, John Marsh debunks a myth cherished by journalists, politicians, and economists: that growing poverty and inequality in the United States can be solved through education. Using sophisticated analysis combined with personal experience in the classroom, Marsh not only shows that education has little impact on poverty and inequality, but that our mistaken beliefs actively shape the way we structure our schools and what we teach in them.
Rather than focus attention on the hierarchy of jobs and power--where most jobs require relatively little education, and the poor enjoy very little political power--money is funneled into educational endeavors that ultimately do nothing to challenge established social structures, and in fact reinforce them. And when educational programs prove ineffective at reducing inequality, the ones whom these programs were intended to help end up blaming themselves. Marsh's struggle to grasp the connection between education, poverty, and inequality is both powerful and poignant.

About the Author:

John Marsh is associate professor of English at Penn State University. He is the author of two previous books: Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way out of Inequality and Hog Butchers, Beggars, and Busboys: Poverty, Labor, and the Making of Modern American Poetry. Marsh is also the editor of You Work Tomorrow: An Anthology of American Labor Poetry, 1929-1941. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania, with his wife and daughter.