On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, diane celia hodges wrote:
> but then who's to say a single mother on welfare, fighting some addiction
> or / and some abusive partner wouldn't enjoy an opportunity to study, say,
>
> a course on the working-poor, feminism, a material-marxist analysis of
> the relations betwen the State and the welfare class...
How about a course in poetry, cave paintings, modern art,
mathematical logic, American history and political philosophy?
Which just so happened. Read "On the uses of a liberal education,
part II, As a weapon in the hands of the restless poor." Written by Earl
Shorris, Harper's Magazine, September, 1997.
> I mean: *if* these were available options, who's to say who would
> or
> wouldn't benefit? if writing practices were less institutionalized, who's to
> say what kinds of contributions might come in? who's to say that, given the
> option,
> she wouldn't produce a provocative video-narrative?
Shorris' article concludes -
"A year after graduation, ten of the first sixteen Clemente Course
graduates were attending four-year colleges or going to nursing school;
four of them had received full scholarships to Bard College. The other
graduates were attending community college or working full-time. Except
for one: she had been fired from her job in a fast-food restaurant for
trying to start a union."
Thirty students had begun the course and sixteen completed the
course over a school year. "...students had fallen to AIDS, pregnancy,
job opportunities, pernicious anemia, clinical depression, a schizophrenic
child, and other forces ..."
In the second year, fourteen out of twenty eight graduated.
The program continues in the Yucatan using classical Maya
literature in Maya.
Someone's making a difference, I'd say.
And, in the words of Eugene, "What do you think?"
Phillip
Phillip