Did you enjoy your Snow Day? Did you hear the Thundersnow?I'm repeating the assignment for Thursday because I would still like to have you do a little Internet project. Social class economic definitions are different from place to place. The County Ranking Map will take you to a feature from the New York Times when you click on it. Do so, and after you reach the website work with the interactive features. Here's what I'd like to have you do.
Choose one county from each end of the spectrum (not necessarily the absolute best or worst, but avoid the color in the middle). You will note that it opens a table with the information about the county, like the one for Fayette County, IL, to the right.
Then go to Google Maps and visit the county and one of the towns in it. Locate something interesting, Use streetview, if you can.
Copy the link, and add it to your resource folder. I gave a demo in class. I'm going to add another one, just for fun
St Elmo, Fayette County Illinois. Take a look around
Read, in Class Matters:
2. Life at the Top in America Isn’t Just Better, It’s Longer
JANNY SCOTT
3. A Marriage of Unequals
TAMAR LEWIN
The New York Times. Class Matters (Kindle Locations 8-12). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition. (I have both the Kindle Edition and the paperback edition. In some ways the Kindle edition is easier to use, if you have an app on your computer as I do.)
As you read chapter two, think of the reasons why persons at the top of the economic scale live longer than ones who are not at the top. Sometimes our culture gets in to an argument about whose fault this is. Some of this is of the "if you're poor it is your own fault" type, and there have been angry arguments about this in the last month or two. I'd like to have you Google "Obama Care" and "Affordable Care Act", find something interesting and put it in your resource folder.
"Marriages that cross class boundaries may not present as obvious a set of challenges as those that cross the lines of race or nationality. But in a quiet way, people who marry across class lines are also moving outside their comfort zones, into the uncharted territory of partners with a different level of wealth and education, and often, a different set of assumptions about things like manners, food, child-rearing, gift-giving, and how to spend vacations." If you don't know already, make a guess about which partner was upper class and which was working class--who "married up" and who "married down" After reading, were you surprised? What would most most persons believe?
The more additions you make to your resource folder the less you have to listen to me lecture. I notice that the folders are more like deserts, as far as uploads into them go.
