Arguing Like a Citizen

What’s at Stake in Teaching Argument

James Miller University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Texas State Board of Education: Who’s In, Who’s Out

President Barack Obama, 2014

• “Now is the time to build a firmer, stronger foundation for growth that will not only withstand future economic storms, but one that helps us strive and compete in the global economy. It’s time to reform our colleges so that they provide Americans a chance to learn the skills and knowledge necessary to compete for the jobs of the future.”

Whitehouse.gov

Two Ways to Think About Argument and Citizenship

• Argument as a vehicle for reflecting upon citizenship – What does it mean to act like a citizen? – How can argument serve as a prelude to action? – Importance of considering not just how we act but

why we act • Argument as a vehicle for enacting citizenship

– Argument as its own form of action – Argument: recognizing and acting on our stake – Argument as consequential

John Dewey

• “We do not learn from experience... we learn

from reflecting on experience.”

• “There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract. The notion that some subjects and methods and that acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of predigested materials.”

Richard Ohmann on Education and Citizenship

• “[T]he supposition that higher education and schooling in general serve a democratic society by nourishing hearty citizenship.”

• “[D]emocracy can't work unless citizens are

literate and informed.” • “What a good college education can and does

achieve in the arena of citizenship is help students to refine and develop their literacy into a vehicle of self-advancement.”

My Approach to Teaching Argument and Citizenship

• View citizenship as something exercised and enacted in the particulars of daily life.

• Help students understanding their daily actions and

choices as consequential. • Foster in students a sense of themselves as actors and

agents.

• Create a pedagogy that integrates reflection and action.

ENGLISH 101 COURSE DESCRIPTION “Being Somebody”: Status, Success and the Pursuit of Recognition in American Life

• Few of us would dispute the fact that we live in a status-conscious society. From designer clothes to S.U.V’s, six-

figure salaries to professional degrees, our world is filled with the markers we are told we simply must achieve if we want to be considered a success. But where do these standards come from? And should we really be so quick to use them to define our own self worth? Do such status symbols represent a set of values truly worth living up to? And if not, what are the values we should be embracing instead?

• While status is one of the most ingrained features of daily life, it is also one of the hardest to pin down. It

purports to measure our intrinsic, personal value, but it does so by turning our attention in the opposite direction: toward the ways we are seen, judged and ranked by those around us. It is supposed to be a reflection of our individual self worth, but it remains something we possess only when given to us by others. These are the kinds of contradictions that should prompt us to think more deeply about what status really means, and how it actually works.

• In this course, we will attempt to do precisely this. We will spend a good deal of time looking at and thinking

about the different types of status that get celebrated and sold in today’s culture. From the schools we attend to the jobs we hold, from how much money we make to the things we own, from where we live to what we wear, our culture inundates us instructions about the types of status we are supposed to pursue. These instructions have become such a familiar and accepted part of our daily lives, however, that we don’t always stop to question the particular values they preach. We have become so accustomed to hearing our culture’s messages about status that we no longer ask ourselves whether they are really worth listening to.

Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed

• Guilt, you may be thinking warily. Isn't that what we're supposed to feel? But guilt doesn't go anywhere near far enough; the appropriate emotion is shame -- shame at out own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on -- when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently -- then she had made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The "working poor," as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor; to everyone else.

Student Responses “The author makes a clear argument that the comfort of the privileged classes depends on the labor provided by the working poor. But I disagree that this is something I should responsible for. At the end of the day, everyone is responsible for their own choices, and we get don’t get anywhere by believing that the choices we make affect anybody else.” “Barbara Ehrenreich calls out her readers for being indifferent to the plight of the poor. In doing so, she shows how the assumptions people make about those in poverty can actually do harm. While this issue doesn’t really affect me personally, I do think it is an effective strategy for getting readers’ attention and causing them to think.”

3 Contexts for Examining Minimum Wage Issue

• Historical: – How has this issue been debated historically? – What factors drove the push to mandate a “living wage”? – What figures and forces pushed it to the forefront of public debate?

• Civic

– How is this issue discussed and debated now? – What are the key issues? – Who are the key stakeholders? – What are the parallels between modern examples and historical ones?

• Personal

– How do you live out this debate in your own lives? – In what ways are you affected by this debate? – In what ways do you participate in this debate?

National Recovery Act

FDR Speech, “National Recovery Act” (1933)

• It seems to me plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.

• Throughout industry, the change from starvation wages and starvation employment to living wages and sustained employment can, in large part, be made by an industrial covenant to which all employers shall subscribe. It

• This law is also a challenge to labor. Workers, too, are here given a new charter of rights long sought and hitherto denied. But they know that the first move expected by the Nation is a great cooperation of all employers, by one single mass-action, to improve the case of workers on a scale never attempted in any Nation.

• Finally, this law is a challenge to our whole people. There is no power in America that can force against the public will such action as we require. But there is no group in America that can withstand the force of an aroused public opinion. This great cooperation can succeed only if those who bravely go forward to restore jobs have aggressive public support and those who lag are made to feel the full weight of public disapproval.

#Fightfor15 • Wage theft costs workers & their families an est. $56 million every

week in LA, Chicago, & NYC • • Add your name to support the #WalmartStrikers fighting for $15 an

hour and full-time schedules: • • $9-an-hr U.S. fast-food shift manager: “If I made $20 an hr, I could

actually live, instead of dreaming about living” • • "The best escalator to opportunity in America is education..but a

new study shows the escalator is broken." • • For every $1 the min wage is increased, taxpayers would save 24

cents. http://on.epi.org/1uayyvg via @EconomicPolicy

Putting “Living Wage” Into Personal Context

• Choose a situation in your own life in which you feel question of a “living wage” is relevant • • Work • Family • School • Neighborhood • • Describe this setting

– What is the specific issue? – What key questions or problems does it involve? – Who are the key stakeholders? What are their interests?

• • Identify what is at stake:

– What kind of stakeholder are you? – What specific interest do you have in the outcome of this debate? – How do your interests compare to the interests of other stakeholders?

• • Move from stakes to action

– What concrete action can you take to serve/further your interests? – Construct an argument that both presents and justifies a plan for action – What change, action, or policy are you advocating? – What argument can you make about why it is necessary?