8/6/2019 Unit 1: Rags to Riches: Franklin and Petry on Social and Economic Mobility

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Rags to Riches:

Franklin & Petry on Social & economic Mobility

primary texts:•  The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (first published in French in 1791, first

English edition 1818)•  The Street by Ann Petry (1946)secondary resources:

•  “Puerto Rican Obituary” by Piedro Pietri (1973)•  “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon (1980)

This is a particularly stark pairing: the story of a white man in 18th century Philadelphiaalongside the story of a black woman in 20th century Harlem.

Benjamin Franklin arrives in Philadelphia with only a few coins in his pocket and soonenough he's running a printing press, starting libraries and universities, organizingfirefighters, causing roads to be paved, and attempting to achieve moral perfection.

Many believe Franklin’s to be the quintessential American success story—and Franklinhimself a paragon of virtue, hard work, and civic engagement.

In Ann Petry’s The Street, Lutie Johnson, an African American woman living in Harlem,tries to follow Benjamin Franklin’s model in order to raise herself and her son frompoverty. But the obstacles and setbacks she faces show that Franklin’s example may not be universally applicable.

Reading The Street alongside The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin will immersestudents in enduring questions about the causes of poverty and the factors that lead toor prevent social and economic mobility. While keeping in mind their different timeperiods, genres, and central characters, we will analyze the ways Petry qualifies andcontradicts the American dream of mobility that Franklin’s autobiography helpedcreate and perpetuate.

Key Questions

What does success mean to Franklin?What does success mean to Lutie?

What individual characteristics help Franklin to succeed?What external structures, groups, forces, or individuals help Franklin to succeed?

What individual characteristics cause Lutie to fail?What external structures, groups, forces, or individuals cause Lutie to fail?

What allusions to Franklin’s autobiography come up in The Street , and how are theseallusions being used?

Why doesn’t Franklin’s model work for Lutie?

8/6/2019 Unit 1: Rags to Riches: Franklin and Petry on Social and Economic Mobility

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Use of Secondary Resources

Two more recent texts help us trace the relevance of these key questions through the20th century. The poem “Puerto Rican Obituary” provides a bridge to the immigrantexperience, telling the story of the dreams, hard work, and disappointments of fivePuerto Ricans in New York.

“Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” shows the subtle ways education inlower-class, middle-class, and upper-class schools helps ensure that those on the topwill stay on top and those on the bottom will stay on the bottom. I suspect that thisarticle will be particularly relevant and eye-opening to my students, who attend one of the most privileged schools in the country—a school whose explicit purpose is to groomand empower America’s future leaders.