(no subject)

[ursula]

Tim Burke has some comments (on a New York Times article I have avoided reading) about the way liberal-arts schools sell choice which seem remarkably aware of the ways in which the liberal arts are genuinely elite.

My roommate for a summer Research Experience for Undergraduates several years ago was Hoa. At some point not very far into our acquaintance, she asked me, "There aren't very many Asian kids at your school, are there?" at which point I said, "Huh?" and she explained, "You seem to have trouble understanding my accent."

My small-elite-liberal-arts-college was full of Asian-American students; but it didn't have many students like Hoa, who had been in the U.S. all of two years, and had switched her major from teaching (in Vietnam) to mathematics (at a large East Coast state university). Hoa seemed to conclude that my school was horribly expensive; but of course it was too well-endowed to ask anything at all from someone like Hoa. The issue was more that nobody like her would have considered attending an institution focussed on writing and reading and being a better person. She was going to college-- and participating in a competitive math REU-- so she could get a good job when she was done.

That was the true luxury of Swarthmore: the luxury of getting an education, rather than a career. It was a class distinction, but not the distinction of pricetag; and I think that elitism was invisible to most of us.

Comments

[ursula]

What I find most interesting is that the choice displays a class distinction rather than an actual income distinction-- one can be raised by organic farmers on a small island who are writing poetry, or just by starving grad students, and still retain this apparent freedom.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

well, i recently realized that we need to look at earning *potential* rather than actual income. i mean, i make about $4000 a year, but i'm firmly middle class (if not upper middle class).

in fact, i'd argue with all of the people barely getting by on my flist, very few of them are actual working class...students, mothers, non-profit jobs...we *choose* our lack of income (well, the mother issue is more complicated, but there still are various choices involved...for example, i could get a tenure track job across the country and have a long distance marriage..but i wouldn't want that for my kids, so: choice! otoh, i don't think of parenthood as a luxury that i choose to spend my time/money on...if for no other reason than that i'm rearing the tax payers of the future!!!)

[ursula]

There's the good old-fashioned argument that women make less money than men and aren't paid for all the things like raising kids or cleaning houses because it's economically convenient to have a large group of people who are underpaid, and it seems like the current U.S. trend to require more higher education for the same job has roughly the same source . . . I sound like I'm arguing against myself, don't I? But I suppose what I'm wondering is whether we collectively have the same earning potential that we have individually.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

ah...that's a really good question!

the things that gets me is the way this system uses concepts like "love" to justify not paying someone for the same job that gets paid (and benefits!) if someone else does it. Even if we step away from motherhood, takin care of sick relatives, dying parents,...same thing!

The entire system relies on volunteer labor that doesn't get rewarded (not even in health insurance nd social security years!!!)...and yes, while every individual woman chooses to do that, as a class, we are "stuck" with it, aren't we???

[ursula]

It doesn't get benefits as often as it ought, even when someone else is doing it . . .