2lk

First 15 minutes: had them make up questions based on today's sociology lecture.  A little review.  They then stood and ask a question, and the person who answered the question asked the next.  They had pretty good questions, though I don't know how many knew the answers to how many of them.

 Finally had the internet up and running, and went to NYTimes site on working class issues.

Called "Class matters."  Worked through the interactive graphic that figures out class station based on Occupation, Education, Income, and Wealth.  I used the stuff from my own life by way of example.  I am in the upper 20 percent in everything, even wealth because of my retirement and the condo.  This is crazy of course; I am hardly wealthy.  This makes me think the middle class may be in some trouble, as it surely is.

Then went to another interactive graphic relating eventual income to education level.  The point being that income level is of course directly related to education level, and whether or not one is able to acquire education depends on class standing of family of origins.

Used myself as an example.  Showed them my blog and picture of me in SC as a child in front of house with no indoor plumbing.  Yes, moving up is possible in the USA; the question is whether it is now more or less possible.

Break:

Discussed their blog quotations from the Manifesto.  They picked pretty good ones.  The classics--all that is solid and whereever the bourgeoiose has got the upper hand it had torn asunder the motely feudal....etc.  One student mentioned her roommate whose father called her at 11 at night to ask her if she was studying.  At 11 at night, and when she said she wasn't, he said she should be and that she should spend all of the following day in the library.

I said that was an invasion of the student's privacy.

Talked about staying alive longer and the stresses and strains that puts on the family bonds, a stress and strain of money.

About how far food has to travel on average to get to your mouth.

About the creation of new appetiites using the mango as my example.

Are children now a days emotional investments.

Told them California should become its own country and that I was going to run for President of California with just two points in my platform:  Legalize all drugs and prostitution.  I would estalish real DRUG stores.  Then we would annex Oregon and join up with Mexico to produce the most powerful nation in the world.  

Concluded by asking that the start their papers with a blog entry on class and their relation to it.  They are confused by this or just aren't paying any attention yet. 

I believe the teachings of sociology are very hard teachings, hard lessons about limitations and how one is limited or defined at birth in fundamental ways.

I would anticipate that these lessons will produce resistance conscious and or unconsciousness to these lessons.  They teach contingency. 

This resistance may produce at an extreme a complete disengagement from the materials. Boredom.

I heard a student say after lecture today, this stuff is of absolutely on interest to me....absolutely of no interest: the world as city, the world as ghetto....