Increasing wealth and income inequality has been a decades long touchstone issue in the United States. Income inequality is “the extent to which income is distributed in an uneven manner among a population. In the United States, income inequality, or the gap between the rich and everyone else, has been growing markedly, by every major statistical measure, for some 30 years.”
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The causal factors for increasing wealth and income inequality are wide-ranging. Understanding its intricacies is challenging as there are no exact answers that can be applied to resolve its fluidity and a large body of literature exists exploring this issue. The question is, then, how can we understand what causes gaps between wealth and income inequality, and what, if anything, can be done about it? It is important to recognize that this question is broad and cannot be resolved in one short answer. But, one way may be to examine how income inequality effects the ability of an individual or group to change their economic status. Through analyzing the novel The Outsiders
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students will use leading economic theory to analyze character development and write an argumentative short essay discerning weather a character’s social mobility is an issue of inequity.
With the emphasis on improving literacy standards nationwide, using economic theory to analyze novels is a unique approach to help students build their reading comprehension and economic literacy. Economic literacy is the way in which we understand how the economy works and instruction can be designed to help students make key essential understandings from the standpoint of economic inequality. In fact, there are a host of novels that are recommended for middle school reading lists that teach economic inequality. For example, popular dystopian themed novels like The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008), Divergent (Roth, 2011), and the Maze Runner (Dashner, 2009) to classics like Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury, 1953), or a contemporary classic like The Giver (Lowry, 1993) all use economic inequity to drive plot lines.
Since there is no roadmap merging ELA and Economic standards and because my unit is designed with middle school students in mind, deep consideration was given to how to best implement unit goals. The unit design assumes students in general have little to no background knowledge in economics. With this in mind, I believe it best to organize this unit first by providing a framework for students to conceptualize economic inequality, followed by notable arguments espoused by leading economists in support of students’ building their initial understandings, and then an overview of this unit’s instructional plan to implement student learning objectives.
Unit design will begin with understanding key ideas about The Great Gatsby Curve. The Great Gatsby Curve is an economic theory that is empirically proven and concludes a negative link between economic inequality and mobility. This curve espouses that “greater income inequality in one generation amplifies the consequences of having rich or poor parents for the economic status of the next generation.”
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The Great Gatsby Curve should help students form initial understandings that economic mobility is the movement between income levels, it denotes the economic status between the poor, middle class, and wealthy, and movement is contingent upon opportunity of equality.
Another framework will introduce students to how issues of inequality are perpetuated in a negative economic cycle. This framework will begin by defining that economics is the study of how an entity allocates its scarce resources and entities like government, businesses, or individuals can be distributors of resources (teachers can insert connections to popular dystopian novels that most students are familiar with to illustrate this definition). A negative economic cycle influences inequality, where "the combination of high inequality and low mobility could influence the behavior of disadvantaged youth in ways that further diminishes their chances of success. Then inequality begins to look like a vicious circle.”
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This cycle is prominently displayed throughout The Outsiders, and students will be encouraged to see relational patterns between inequality and a negative economic cycle.
This unit's instructional approach recognizes economist Thomas Piketty’s argument on economic inequality. To summarize, “economic inequality occurs when wealth accumulation outpaces economic growth causing gaps between the rich, middle class, and poor. Economists note this adversely affects those in poverty who are will most likely never catch up to the socio-economic status of their wealthier counterparts.”
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Two of his conclusions deserve examination as they are sub-conflicts in The Outsiders' plot line: 1. stagnant economic growth causes inequality, and 2. inequality creates fractions of society that will always compete for resources. Analysis is framed around how students see the problem, so recognizing Piketty’s arguments are essential in developing critical understandings.
Grade level materials are carefully selected to optimize student learning in alignment with this unit's goals. Reading materials will draw upon key ideas from the seminar text Economic Inequity and The American Dream Under Siege, (Frazer, 2018) and arguments of leading economists that are germane to economic theory. Although there are no middle school texts specifically geared towards teaching this economic inequality, Frazer’s book will be used as a primary text because it is middle school appropriate. Readings germane to this unit will focus on specific the main ideas in chapter three, The Costs of Inequality, and chapter four, Inequality of Opportunity. These chapters are apropos to the goals of this unit because they underscore economic theory and can be analyzed through developmentally appropriate ELA strategies like compare and contrast, categorizing, summary, and argument writing
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Once perspectives are developed, students will focus on building their argument literacy via a writing task. To accomplish this, it is important to consider the strategy of argument literacy. Students’ ability to masterfully craft a strong argument is what Hillocks (2010) defines as “at the heart of critical thinking and academic discourse, the kind of writing students need to know for success in college... good arguments begin with looking at the data that are likely to become the evidence in an argument and that give rise to a thesis statement or major claim.”
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Using argument literacy, students will be require to take a stance on an issue of their choice germane to the themes identified in the novel and presented in the arguments of Frazer et al.
