It has been a few weeks since I last blogged but have been very busy with school, work and life. In one of my graduate classes we are assigned books to which we read and write a critique. One of the books that is showing some great insight on the issues of our economic times that goes hand in hand with today's society is 'Pedagogy of the Poor: Building the Movement to End Poverty' written by Willie Baptist and Jan Rehmann. The reason I bring this book up is for a few reasons: First, they talk about the issue of poverty and its never-ending cycle which can be useful teaching Earth Science in a similar area. Second, the book raises the idea that as long as the 'higher-ups' can conquer and divide a group, there will always be a bottom. The third and most important reason to this blog today is that the working-poor classes' communities are having their most fundamental rights threatened by big private firms and companies. While reading these case studies I could not help but get angry at these corporations who think they can just come into a town and make it theirs without the consent of the present families and communities there first. Here is an excerpt from the book'Pedagogy of the Poor':
'In addition to service cuts, a move towards privatization began with the hiring of a former vice president of a privatization consulting firm based in Atlanta to perform the daily administration of the city. He hired a former vice president to run the water department in Highland Park. This new administrator raised the water rates steeply and subcontracted the water department's collection to a private firm, which sent employees carrying firearms to shut of people's water. The city administrator has instituted a policy for adding delinquent water bills to the property tax owed for a home. The city then began to foreclose on homes people who could not pay their water bill. In some cases, children were seized from parents who could not pay their water bill and placed in foster care. Highland Park's new water rates are among the highest rates in the country. It should be no surprise, then, that almost half of Highland Park households have been slated for water shutoff. At the same time, these two administrators were paid $300,000 a year for the part-time work they perform for the financially strapped city (p.87).'
How did you feel after reading that passage?
What would you do if your town was bought up by a privatization firm and raised your water bills?
Would you move? Stay your ground and fight for what is right?
Would you work for a corrupt firm if they paid you a ridiculous amount of money even though you would be hurting thousands?
Those are the type of questions that ran through my mind after I read this excerpt. It saddens me that in today's world we are privileged enough to have technology to make our lives easier but all it's really doing is putting people out of work and out of money faster than they are being replenished.
Teaching the Water Cycle for me used to mean defining words sch as infiltration, evapotranspiration, runoff, condensation, etc. and the idea that it is trying to stay in balance. I know now that it is way more complex than that; I now should be informing my students about the downside of corporations, what they are doing to families like ourselves, and the empowerment to stand up for what they know is right and just. Students need to be aware of what they will be facing in the future and encourage them to do the right thing.
