Summer Vacation = Over!

Obviously I took a little summer vacation from blogging -- no excuses, but now I'm feeling that back-to-school, autumnal, Virgo, Septembery, pumpkins and maple leaves, fresh sharp pencils and first day outfits vibe, so I'm back. Rather than try to summarize the finer points of summer fun, which I will get to in due time (for anyone who's still reading!), I just have to share a story from the last week of the daily summer US history class I taught. That class, by the way, was a large part of the delay in blogging and other areas (sorry garden!).

I assigned this book, which is an excellent, if a bit academic, history of corporate power moving intra- and inter-nationally in pursuit of cheap, young, nonunionized female labor. But more than that, it's about communities of workers in these different places -- Camden, New Jersey; Bloomington, Indiana; Memphis, Tennessee; and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico -- and how much they had/have in common with one another. Long story short, wouldn't it be nice if workers had as much of an international identification with others with similar interests as corporations do? Good lefty labor history type stuff. Of course only two students actually finished it, but whatev.

The real story is what happened when we had a discussion of the book. Since they hadn't read it, I quickly resorted to those sad teacher tricks, like asking "what IS community?" (groan) But, we do what we must. When I got blank stares for that, I tried to personalize it with an example. Here's the conversation:

Me: Are you in a community with other State Research University students?
Them: Yes! (emphatic)
Me: What about with the students at Other Big State University 50 miles away?
Them: Yeah, totally, sure!
Me: OK...what about other college students in other states? Nationwide?
Them: Hmmmm...it depends.
Me: Harvard? Penn? NYU?
Them: Yeah, we are!
Me: Uh-huh...what about with students at Small Local Community College?
Them: No, no. Not really.
Me: What about with the city of ____ (in which their university is located and which sucks up all life forms in its vicinity)?
Them: No. Nope, not a community with them.
Me: Discussion over. Time for another documentary.

That about sums up the problem. And they're not wrong. Like the corporations in the book, they have a clear understanding (if a bit inflated -- Harvard? Come now!) of their interests and identities rooted in class and educational privilege that span state and even national boundaries. And they were not at all concerned about not participating in the community whose resources they exhaust and whose residents clean their shiny campus buildings and serve them their turkey wraps. After this we never came back to the book because I realized it was a moot point. For them. Which they know well.

Future blog posts will be about sunshine, kittens and ripe tomatoes!