James P. Brochin
Designed for a large urban public high school’s upperclassmen in a Journalism class, the unit’s central thematic focus is the causes and effects of economic inequality on the middle class.
In this country, we believe that everyone has a chance for prosperity, or at least a comforting sense of security: being able to pay our bills, send our children to college, succeed if we try hard enough, being able to afford health care. Taken together, we call this being middle class. Put another way, we call this The American Dream. Some of us aspire to great wealth, a mansion in the Hamptons. For the vast majority of Americans, making it involves simpler aspirations: doing better than our parents, living longer than our parents, being more educated than our parents.
In some other countries, such as England, most of Latin America, and India, everyone knows that social classes exist. Aspirations are delimited by birth, tneighborhood, educational opportunities, income level, and gender roles. In America, we tell ourselves that our future is what we make it, not what we're born into.
After decades of increasing income inequality, we should examine whether The American Dream seems less attainable for millions of Americans, whether the broad definition of being middle class has narrowed, whether America has stepped back. We play it safe, keep our heads down, and hope for the best.
There is broad agreement that income inequality is real and growing, and convincing evidence that some of the causes are 1) changes in tax policy, particularly income tax policy, that favor the wealthy, 2) the weakening power of labor unions, 3) the rapid increases in the costs of higher education, 4) resistance to reasonable increases in the minimum wage, and more.
My own view is that income inequality is only one part of the picture, that America has become more selfish, mean, and prefers to hype the relentless pursuit of money and power over the greater good. To quote Gordon Gecko, “Greed is Good.”
My topic will be "The Shrinking Middle Class?" Within this topic would be various subtopics/questions: 1) What is an accurate definition of "Middle Class?" (Is it defined by an income range or by a state of mind?) 2) What are the effects of periodic economic downturns on ordinary Americans? (confidence, conformity, fear of failure, mental health), 3) What effects do increases in the minimum wage have on the middle class? (decreased poverty, overall confidence in the future, the effect on the overall economy?) My own students are urban and many do not consider themselves, and are not, among the middle class. The topic should resonate.
Do Americans these days even believe that The American Dream, joining and staying among the middle class, is attainable? It is a depressing thought that the percentage of Americans who believe in this has taken a downturn. Research and survey results, especially from the Pew Foundation, suggest that aspirations have lowered for a statistically significant portion of Americans.
The primary focus of the unit will be economic: an examination of the causes for and the effects of income inequality in America, with a particular emphasis on answering the question, “The Shrinking Middle Class?”
