The steady expansion of college enrollment rates over the last generation has been heralded as a major step toward reducing chronic economic disparities. But many of the policies that broadened access to higher education—including affirmative action, open admissions, and need-based financial aid—have come under attack in recent years by critics alleging that schools are admitting unqualified students who are unlikely to benefit from a college education. In Passing the Torch, Paul Attewell, David Lavin, Thurston Domina, and Tania Levey follow students admitted under the City University of New York’s “open admissions” policy, tracking its effects on them and their children, to find out whether widening college access can accelerate social mobility across generations. Unlike previous research into the benefits of higher education, Passing the Torch follows the educational achievements of three generations over thirty years. The book focuses on a cohort of women who entered CUNY between 1970 and 1972, when the university began accepting all graduates of New York City high schools and increasing its representation of poor and minority students. The authors survey these women in order to identify how the opportunity to pursue higher education affected not only their long-term educational attainments and family well-being, but also how it affected their children’s educational achievements. Comparing the record of the CUNY alumnae to peers nationwide, the authors find that when women from underprivileged backgrounds go to college, their children are more likely to succeed in school and earn college degrees themselves. Mothers with a college degree are more likely to expect their children to go to college, to have extensive discussions with their children, and to be involved in their children’s schools. All of these parenting behaviors appear to foster higher test scores and college enrollment rates among their children. In addition, college-educated women are more likely to raise their children in stable two-parent households and to earn higher incomes; both factors have been demonstrated to increase children’s educational success. The evidence marshaled in this important book reaffirms the American ideal of upward mobility through education. As the first study to indicate that increasing access to college among today’s disadvantaged students can reduce educational gaps in the next generation, Passing the Torch makes a powerful argument in favor of college for all.
The open-admissions experiment at the City University of New York was the most ambitious effort ever made to promote equality of opportunity in American higher education. Initiated in 1970, during the heyday of the "great society," it defined college as a right for all who had completed high school, and it especially aimed to create educational opportunities for disadvantaged minority students. This book evaluates that controversial experiment. Although critics predicted that the open-admissions policy would sweep away academic standards and result in watered-down degrees of little value, David Lavin and David Hyllegard present data to show that students who graduated were able not only to earn postgraduate degrees at non-CUNY institutions but also to obtain good jobs--far better than the jobs they could have expected without the opportunity open admissions gave them. Indeed, in one year in the 1980s, say the authors, open-admissions students earned $67 million more than they would have if they had not gone to college. Notwithstanding the successes of open admissions, attacks on it have continued, and, as the book shows, minority access to college has been cut back significantly at CUNY and elsewhere. This book provides ammunition for those who want to challenge emerging policies that narrow educational opportunities for minority students and poor people.
First Published in 1992. The last decade of the twentieth century has seen an unprecedented advocacy for the preservation of a safe environment, and the prevention of ill-health from toxic chemicals. Human activity, however, is responsible for introducing new toxins into the environment. In order to control competitors for human food sources, an armament of pesticides has been assembled and their widespread and largely uncontrolled application has been permitted. It is only when the health of the population begins to suffer from the effects of these chemicals that the efficacy of their use is questioned. Decision-makers whose roles involve the promotion and control of the environment must look to lessons that can be learnt from biosystems that include animals other than man. Toxins and Targets details the way in which organisms from diverse habitats in the plant and animal kingdoms have adapted to handle toxins safely. Part I, on the aquatic environment, highlights the means by which marine organisms have adapted their toxins to be effective in a world of high aqueous solubility and infinite dilution. Part II deals with venomous terrestrial organisms and the mechanisms by which they damage animal cells, and Part III considers the way in which human society attempts to investigate toxicity and to control both synthetic and naturally occurring poisons. The development of a safe environment depends on increased knowledge and novel approaches to solving escalating problems. This book is a step towards this end.
Principles of Art History Writing traces the changes in the way in which writers about art represent the same works. These differ in such deep ways as to raise the question of whether those at the beginning of the process even saw the same things as those at the end did. Carrier uses four case studies to identify and explain changing styles of restoration and the history of interpretation of selected works by Piero, Caravaggio, and van Eyck." -- Back cover
On stage from her childhood, Martha Raye (1916-1994) proudly embraced the role of the clown, her gift for slapstick comedy enhanced by a fine singing voice. She became a star with her first feature film, Rhythm on the Range (1936), as the zany, loudmouthed girl looking for love--or chasing it as it ran away. She won popular and critical acclaim with The Martha Raye Show (1954-1956) before it was abruptly cancelled, partly because of her chaotic personal life. Drawing on new interviews with her colleagues, this retrospective covers the life and career of an enduringly funny lady who influenced a generation of women comedians. Her reign as a top NBC star of the 1950s is covered, along with her appearances on popular variety shows, her roles in fondly remembered series like The Bugaloos, McMillan and Alice, and her film career that teamed her with the likes of Jack Benny, Charlie Chaplin and Doris Day.
A growing number of environmental groups focus on more sustainable practices in everyday life, from the development of new food systems, to community solar, to more sustainable fashion. No longer willing to take part in unsustainable practices and institutions, and not satisfied with either purely individualistic and consumer responses or standard political processes and movement tactics, many activists and groups are increasingly focusing on restructuring everyday practices of the circulation of the basic needs of everyday life. This work labels such action sustainable materialism, and examines the political and social motivations of activists and movement groups involved in this growing and expanding practice. The central argument is that these movements are motivated by four key factors: frustration with the lack of accomplishments on broader environmental policies, a desire for environmental and social justice, an active and material resistance to the power of traditional industries, and a form of sustainability that is attentive to the flow of materials through bodies, communities, economies, and environments. In addition to these motivations, these movements demonstrate such material action as political action, in contrast to existing critiques of new materialism as apolitical or post-political. Overall, sustainable materialism is explored as a set of movements with unique qualities, based in collective rather than individual action, a dedication to local and prefigurative politics, and a demand that sustainability be practiced in everyday life - starting with the materials and flows that provide food, power, clothing, and other basic needs.
Between the 1890s and the Vietnam era, many thousands of American Protestant missionaries were sent to live throughout the non-European world. They expected to change the people they encountered, but those foreign people ended up transforming the missionaries. Their experience abroad made many of these missionaries and their children critical of racism, imperialism, and religious orthodoxy. When they returned home, they brought new liberal values back to their own society. Protestants Abroad reveals the untold story of how these missionary-connected individuals left an enduring mark on American public life as writers, diplomats, academics, church officials, publishers, foundation executives, and social activists. --
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