Politics 201
AMERICAN INEQUALITES
POLT-201-01, 3 hours. 3SS, CD, Qpf
Mr. Bruner MWF 3:30 -4:20
Fall 1995 Wilder 21 1
Office Hours: in Rice 226, Mon. & Thu. 9-10 am. Call me for other meeting times Office phone: ext 8053; home: 775-1086; both have answering devices.
Email: JERE@OCVAXA.CC.OBERLIN.EDU
If you mail me anything, mail it to me at the Politics department, not at home.
WHAT THE COURSE IS ABOUT
This course is about some of the educational, occupational and political statuses, actions, choices and opinions of the American people during the past four decades, and about how they have fared in the pursuit of the American Dreams.
The American Dream comes in two varieties.
One is the dream of achievement, the story of America as the land of opportunity. This dream says that individual striving to get an education, and hard work on the job, competing with others to the limit of the law, will lead to higher status jobs, and more income, more power, all those in the pursuit of happiness.
The other American Dream is the dream of equality and brotherhood. One of the hymns of our Civil Religion calls the nation beautiful for the patriot dream that sees beyond the years, to alabaster cities undimmed by human tears, to a good that is crowned with brotherhood. Politics and government can and should step in and help those who lose out in the battle for existence, says this American Dream. People have a right, not to be equally rich, but at least to education, work and a certain standard of living.
We all learn both of these dreams, contradictory as they often are, and we learn them with differing emphases.
This course leads you to inquire into the changing achievements of men and women, and of white Anglos, Latinos, African Americans and Asians in pursuit of the two American Dreams.
We look at majorities and minorities and their relative sizes and growth rates. We trace the changing patterns of family life, and their impact on poverty and well-being. We follow the striving for an education, then for better jobs, and for the better income the better job provides. We consider how and whether those who come out higher in the economic struggle are uniformly also happier, healthier, and better off, regardless of gender, race, and ethnicity -- or do these identities make a difference, even when we compare people of equal socio-economic status?
We look at politics as a way of working together and taking sides that can give added leverage to individual striving, and make rewards fairer. We compare the genders and race- ethnicities in how active they are in politics, how they feel about the government whether they feel they belong to a party, and if so which, and where they stand on some basic issues. We compare Americans to citizens of other nations on a whole array of issues.
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The ideas reach across political science, sociology, economics, and demography. Through many topics we focus on a central problem, that of class, gender and racial-ethnic differences and similarities, equalities and inequalities, changes, and what-causes-what.
COMPUTING TO FIND THE ANSWERS
A very unusual feature of this course is how you get the information. The approach is data- based direct inquiry, using a worktext, American Inequalities. Unlike the usual text, the worktext asks questions, but it doesn't tell you the answers. It usually asks you to "guesstimate" what the answers will be. It tells you how to use a reasonably friendly computer program called CHIP to find out the answers yourself, by analyzing high-quality data from national-sample political, sociological and economic surveys, or US census data. It asks you to present your results in graphic images that tell the story of the answers.
This course does not assume you have had any experience with personal computers. These days, nearly all students have. If you haven't, after the first week or so it won't make much difference. And the course's main interest is in what you are finding out, not in the computer or the program for their own sakes.
This is a not a Methods course. In a Methods course the main thing is the methods, and the data analysis is just Exercises and Illustrations which usually don't follow any particular line of inquiry. We concentrate on the inquiry, which forms an ongoing story. But as we go along, you will be learning the essentials of survey data analysis.
WORKWAYS AND GRADING
This is not a hare course, it is a tortoise course. Slow and steady. Getting behind and then trying a hard sprint to catch up will not work. I ask that you come to class each time with your computing and graphing done, so that we can discuss the results and what they mean. The grading will take account of the extent to which you do that, as well as how well you do it.
You are allowed three unexcused absences. Save them up from when you want to stuff for some hour exam in another course. Excused absences are confined to serious illness, family crises, and away games. After the first three, each unexcused absence costs 5 percent of your grade, that is, 0.2 on the 4-point scale.
I think discussion -- discussion informed by your graphed results -- ought to be the heart of this course. In the discussion, sometimes we will need graphic presentation of the computing results, when the work has been parceled out to subgroups, each of which reports findings to the rest of the class. Once the results are before us, we need to formulate some prose to say what they mean. Then we can talk about answers to the questions the worktext poses, sometimes factual, sometimes "what does that mean" in a wider sense, sometimes "is that good or bad, and for whom?" and sometimes even how we feel about the findings -- for some of them can cause surprise, hope, reassurance, fear, anger or sadness, or stark incredulity.
I ask you to hand in printout and graphs after each class meeting.
A. Once a week, usually Friday, I will also ask for written answers to the questions in the worktext. This work we'll call weekly reports. The weekly report work will be graded on the usual four-point scale. Late work will ordinarily not be accepted.
B. On the other days I will just ask you to hand in printout and graphs (grnph work) without written answers to the questions. For these times, make notations for yourself about the question-answers and other comments, to help you contribute to the discussion. This work will be graded more simply: If it is submitted, it will be graded at the end of the course with the average for your weekly reports. If it is not submitted at class time, it scores 0. Unless you have some very good excuse, and tell me.
C. Weekly reports and graph work together count 75% of your grade. This 75% can be raised or lowered by my judgment of the quality and quantity of your class contributions.
D. Just before the Fall Break, and again at the end of the course, you will do an Analysis Report, in the form of results and graphs embedded in an essay that a stranger (not taking Politics 201) could read and understand. The amount of analysis will be about what you usually do, but the prose will be more. You have some freedom of choice about what to do in these Reports. The grades on this work provide the other 25% of the course grade.
YOU WILL NEED:
1. The worktext American Inequalities. This you buy from me for $25. Saves you paying the bookstore's markup. If you take the course, you must buy the text. And last year's won't do, because I am constantly updating the book.
I am revising the worktext, so it will come to you in installments. You will need a looseleaf notebook to hold these. The revisions will be first, in the first half of the course, some new datafiles and questions using the 1990 US census to investigate levels of education, employment, poverty, family structure, etc., among white Anglos, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. In the second, more "political" half of the course, revisions will be updates to the data to include the 1994 election.
2. Three-hole "college lined" loose-leaf notebook paper for your graphing and prose, with a red rule down the left side, and blue lines starting 1 3/8 inch from the top. There are 34 blue lines ruled on the page. This paper fits our graphing needs well. You could also use graph paper, but it costs more, and is harder to write prose on. A loose-leaf notebook to hold these. I will collect and inspect these weekly reports and graph work of yours at long intervals.
3. Rulers. Draw all graph lines with these, not free-hand and sloppy. I find very useful a set of transparent plastic triangles, that you can buy in bookstores or drugstores, with inches ruled on one side, and centimeters on another. Also useful is a transparent ruler, a foot long, with inches and centimeters.
4. Pens to draw graphs with. The Pilot Precise V series rolling ball pens are excellent.
5. White correction fluid, Liquid Paper, for painting out mistakes on the graphs.
6. A stapler, to fasten the work you hand in. This should in any case be part of your student equipment. Get a reasonably sturdy one, not one of those red ittybitties.
7. A substantial three-hole puncb is useful, so you can keep other papers in the notebook too. You can get simpler ones that punch two or three pages at once, and that themselves fit into a three-hole notebook. Ruggeder ones cost more and are less portable.
8. A calculator. You need one with an addressable memory, shown by keys labeled M+, M-, MR and MC. The cheapest one will work for what we do, although a low-line "scientific" calculator will simplify your work when you are calculating averages, or subtracting negative numbers, and doesn't cost much more. The Coop has these, and you could try Drug Mart, too.
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THE SCHEDULE
Week 0: September 1
FRI: Introduction to the course. Between now and the next meeting, Wednesday Sept. 6, be sure you get the supplies mentioned under "You Will Need."
Week 1: September 4, 6, 8
MON: Labor Day, no class meeting
WED: American Inequalities, Read the Introduction and look over the rest. Get the supplies you will need. The class mn meet this once in Mudd Room 212, the Apple Mar classroom. This is on the nght side of the Listening Area.
FRI: Unit 1, Majorities and Minorities.
Week2: September 11, 13, 15
MON: Unit 2: Identities and issues: equal role for women?
WED: Unit 3: Identities and Issues: job guarantee, civil rights.
FRI: Unit 4: Party issue or race issue?
There will be some changes in the materialfrom here to the break.
Week 3: September 18, 20, 22.
MON: Unit 5. Whites, Hispanics, blacks: increasing & multiplying
WED: Unit 6: What's happened to the nuclear family?
FRI: Unit 7: And what's happened to the children?
Week 4: September 25, 27, 29
MON: Unit 8: Genders and race-ethnicities in the education race
WED: Unit 10: Occupational prestige: how good a job is that?
FRI: Unit 13: Racial-ethnic inequalities in pay
Week 5: October 2, 4, 6
MON: Unit 14: Men, women, and wages
WED: Yom Kippur, Free Day Unit 15: Who are the poor?
FRI: Unit 16: Going out to work: women in the labor force.
Week 6: October 9, 11, 13.
MON: Unit 17: Out of work: race, gender, and ethnicity.
WED: Unit 18: Family income: is equality approaching?
FRI: ANALYSIS REPORT DUE. Instructions will be given out. This can draw on Unit 21, Class, trust, health, life and death; Unit 19, The Pursuit of Happiness, or certain other datafiles.
FALL BREAK
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Week 7: October 23, 25, 27
MON: Discussion of Analysis reports
WED: Unit 22: Moving and climbing: blacks
FRI: Unit 23: Moving and climbing: Hispanics
Week 8: October 30, November 1, 3.
MON: Unit 24: The right to vote: the black revolution (1)
WED: Unit 25: Causes of the turnout race-gap, then and now
FRI: Unit 26: Black mayors and political participation
Week 9: November 6, 8, 10
MON: Unit 27: The great disaffection
WED: Unit 28: Political cognitive confidence
FRI: Unit 29: What is a Republican? A Democrat? Who's ahead?
Week 10: November 13, 15, 17
MON: Unit 30: The independents are coming!
WED: Unit 31: Party shift: the black revolution (2)
FRI: Unit 32: What happened to the old Solid South?
Week 11: November 20, 22. Thanksgiving + Friday off.
MON: Unit 37: Black and white perspectives on life and race issues.
WED: Unit 33: Where do those unfeminist women come from?
FRI: Post-Thanksgiving Day Off'
Week 12: November 27, 29, December 1
MON: Unit 34: Feminization?
WED: Unit 3 5: Why the partisan gender gap?
FRI: Unit 36: White America's changing views on race questions
Week 13: December 4, 6, 8.
MON: Unit 37: Black and White perspectives on life and race issues
WED: Unit 39: America and Europe: How much should government do?
FRI: Unit 40: America and Europe: Civil Liberties
Week 14: December 11, 13
MON: TO BE ANNOUNCED
WED: Feedback and evaluation time.
ANALYSIS REPORT, due Saturday, December 16, which is the end of Rea&g Period. Instructions will be given out. This may draw on AI Unit 38 (folder or subdirectory ailib), which gives you lots of choices, or on some other collections of datafiles that are available.
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