Head Start was born in a state of contradiction that thirty six years of struggle and reform have failed to overcome. Conceived in the Office of Economic Opportunity, which was established in 1965 to “eliminate poverty in the United States,” …
The 2000 elections were marked by voter apathy, distrust of politicians, and a widespread cynicism that extended to the political process itself. A certain wariness of state power and those who wield it has been present throughout our history, but …
Ever since President Bill Clinton signed the welfare reform act in August 1996, many women have moved off welfare—but not out of poverty. Despite what was until recently a very strong economy, most former recipients, including those who work, are …
It’s an axiom that writing doesn’t pay the rent, so after graduating from college with a degree in English, I took a part-time job with a company called The Princeton Review, preparing high school students to take the Scholastic Aptitude …
The New Men of Power is a study of trade unions and their leaders, the American political scene, and the prospects for a radicalized democracy in the years just after the Second World War. When C. Wright Mills published the …
How should such concepts as power, dominance, and authority be redefined from a cosmopolitan perspective? I have eight theses. 1. The world economy stands in relation to the state as a kind of meta-power; it can change the national and …
Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights by Robert P. Moses with Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Beacon Press, 2001, 192 pp., $21 Is math education today’s civil rights struggle? Are children in inner-city and poor rural schools the dispossessed sharecroppers …
In the years to follow, I hope we will dedicate ourselves as a nation to giving all our children the world-class education they need. There is no challenge more important. —President Bill Clinton, 2000 There is no greater test of …
Stand in Times Square at night, thrown every way by waves of light and people. It is easy to feel that you are in the belly of some great beast, and that the beast is being fed more and richer …
Three years after India and Pakistan shocked the world with their nuclear tests, it is worth revisiting their arguments for nuclear weapons. Many in the West have already accepted those arguments and grown used to the idea that both countries …
The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read by Andre Schiffrin Verso Books, 2000, 181 pp., $23 Book Business: Publishing Past Present and Future by Jason Epstein Norton, 20001, 188 pp., $21.95 …
Looking at Labor on Film
Recently, after nine years of resolutely ignoring pleas, letters, e-mails, and the occasional phone call, I went to my first ever college alumni event. The reason was not a sudden burst of pride or the creeping nostalgia of age—rather it …
The Case of Filipina Domestic Workers in Hong Kong and Singapore
One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy by Thomas Frank Doubleday, 2000, 414 pp., $26.00 This is the story of a bizarre and, according to its narrator, victorious cultural counterrevolution. Thomas Frank calls …
