Issue 8: Education
To what extent is there a relationship between education and affluence?
Study Questions
- How has education changed over time in response to affluence?
- How has affluence influenced education?
- To what extent is an elite education a path to affluence?
- To what extent does relative affluence impact the quality of a community’s education system?
- Does everyone need to go to college to be affluent? Why, or why not?
- To what degree does affluence foster tuition price discrimination by universities?
- To what extent does affluence affect the need for affirmative action policy in education?
- How and why should we address the challenges of equal access to quality education?
- To what extent does the relative affluence of educators affect the quality of education? How has this changed over time?
- What are the consequences of not supplying a quality education for the less affluent?
- To what extent is a liberal education only affordable to the affluent?
Honors in Action
Project description: Research one of the Honors Study Topic issues as it relates to the environment. Offer to teach a lesson or conduct an activity about the environment for a local youth group or environmental club. Keep America Beautiful has many lessons from which to choose at www.kab.org. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Project description: Research the budgets for schools in the developing world. Present your research on posters during a Better World Books book drive that your chapter leads for your college. (www.betterworldbooks.com). Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Project description: Invite a member from the humanities or liberal arts faculty at your school and/or local four-year college to discuss the history and hallmarks of a liberal education. What are some of the benefits of a liberal education? What role does a liberal education play in an affluent society? Who among global leaders has had a liberal education? Why does Phi Beta Kappa choose to recognize only students of the liberal arts and sciences? What are the challenges and consequences of reducing the liberal arts as a part of the higher education curriculum? Prepare the findings for and submit an article to a higher education journal. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Conduct a tree-planting ceremony at a local school. Contact your local nursery for help in selecting an appropriate tree for your area, or consider becoming a member of the Arbor Day Foundation (www.arborday.org), which provides ten free trees to new members. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Project description: Research and examine the top ten executives as reported by The Wall Street Journal. What are their educational backgrounds? What sorts of leadership training did they receive, and what are the qualities that make them stand out as exemplary business leaders? Determine whether there is a relationship between education, leadership development, and salary. Share your results in a leadership development forum for your college’s student leaders. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Examine the life of someone self-educated such as Frederick Douglass*. Is there a relationship between the value placed on education and affluence? What did Douglass consider essential for his education and how was it similar or different from traditional education at the time? How does the criticism and skepticism he faced as an anti-slavery leader help illustrate the connection between education and affluence? Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Since 1990, scholars in a variety of disciplines have developed numerous courses for studying leadership as well as certificates, minors, and majors in leadership studies. How is this development connected to changing affluence? Research the historiography of leadership studies and the changing approaches to educating leaders over time. Use the project to promote your college’s leadership development program or course, or to lobby for implementing a leadership development program or course at your college. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Conduct a campus-wide survey of the educational objectives of students. What conclusions do you draw about the extent to which affluence is important to your student body? To what extent do the respondents’ educational goals match the degree to which affluence is significant to them? Share the results of your survey analysis by writing an article for your college newspaper, and prepare a proposal to your college administration to link the article to your college’s web site. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Invite a panel of business and community leaders to campus to discuss their own educational backgrounds and leadership philosophies. To what extent do these leaders agree education is important? To what degree do they believe affluence is connected to education? Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Interview affluent retirees who have been leaders in your community, and record those interviews to donate to your college’s library for use by faculty, student, and community researchers. Is there a connection between the educations the retirees received and their affluence? Is there a connection between their leadership philosophies and education? To what extent are their experiences likely to mirror those of your generation? Include at least one retiree who has been influential in preserving your local environment. Prepare a reflection journal on your analysis of these collective interviews to place with the collection in your library. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Project description: As a regional project, research the budgets of the schools in your region to determine similarities and differences in their resources. How much of the schools’ budgets is earmarked for creating green spaces on campus? Share your findings at a regional educational forum and facilitate a discussion about the connection between school funding and affluence. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Project description: Organize a presentation by your college president about the comparative affluence of community colleges and four-year institutions. How do different types of colleges receive funding? What restrictions does each have on its spending? What types of leadership training are fundamental for presidents to understand the intricate local, state, and national funding policies? From your research, prepare position papers for use by your college administrators when they visit with local and state representatives. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Bibliography
- Bailey, Thomas and Vanessa Smith Morest, eds. Defending the Community College Equity Agenda. 2006.
- Bailey and Morest contend that with falling state budgets, growing enrollments, greater emphasis on outcome-based accountability, and growing immigrant student populations, community colleges’ commitment to accessible and affordable higher education could be in jeopardy. Using case studies of colleges in New York, Texas, Florida, California, Washington, and Illinois, the authors analyze how many challenges impact the community college mission of educational opportunity for low-income students, students of color, and other under served groups.
- Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. 1987.
- Bloom discusses concerns that Americans have become too narrow in their focus and world view. As higher education moved toward increased specialization in the 20th century, Americans were ill-served. He believed every student should read the works of the great philosophers who asked the question, “What is man?” in preparation for living philosophical lives.
- Garavuso, Vicki. “Everything Could Be Just as Equal: Working-class Teachers in Privileged Nursery Schools.” Equity & Excellence in Education. Volume 40, Issue 1; Jan-March 2007: p 67-76.
- Garavuso examines the reported experiences of three working-class early childhood teachers of color in privileged nursery schools. She shares their perspectives on the role of the family to make education equal to all.
- Gruwell, Erin. Teach With Your Heart: Lessons I Learned From the Freedom Writers. 2008.
- Gruwell updates her work with Long Beach, California, students and discusses the lessons she learned about America’s educational system and about life while working with the Freedom Writers.
- Johnson, Heather Beth. The American Dream and the Power of Wealth: Choosing Schools and Inheriting Inequality in the Land of Opportunity. 2006.
- This book investigates the idea of equal opportunity and common American ideologies and dispels the possibility of achieving the American Dream for many children. Johnson includes research from in-depth interviews with families across the economic spectrum. She includes research about what people think about the American Dream in middle-class and upper-class families.
- Liu, Goodwin. “Education, Equality, and National Citizenship.” Yale Law Journal. Volume 116, Issue 2; Nov. 2006: p 330-412.
- Liu explores constitutional issues regarding rights for equal citizenship and education and argues that, for disadvantaged children in substandard schools, the recent success of educational adequacy lawsuits in state courts is good. However, he suggests, the greatest inequality across the nation is not within states but between states. Despite the persistence of this inequality and its disparate impact on poor and minority students, the problem draws little policy attention.
* material is included in Phi Theta Kappa Leadership Development Studies: A Humanities Approach. This book is available online at www.ptk.org/recognitions/catalog/.
