Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce’s new report makes the need to adapt for working learners clear and urgent. After all, as the authors state, “nearly 14 million people – 8 percent of the total labor force and a consistent 70 percent to 80 percent of college students” are working learners. “Learning while Earning: The New Normal,” takes a fascinating, detailed look at the people who work while going to school, either pursuing their first degree or returning for additional credentials. But what it leaves out is as important as what it includes. What happens to those who never pursue a first degree? And what about the 65 percent of the “$772 billion spent on postsecondary education and training . . . spent outside of the formal postsecondary education system”?
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For Books@Work professor Gail Arnoff, James McBride’s The Color of Water is more than a memorable family story. It’s an opportunity for conversation, for exploring identity, family and history in the Books@Work seminar as well as in the traditional classroom. As she writes, “We talked about Ruth’s refusal to reveal anything about her background; childrearing; and racial and religious exclusion. In the last session, we discussed the burden of family secrets – in the book as well as in our own families. Most of all we talked about our identity, and the places from which it comes. So many passages in the book triggered discussions, including McBride’s own declaration: ‘Now, as a grown man, I feel privileged to have come from two worlds. My view of the world is not merely that of a black man but that of a black man with something of a Jewish soul….[When] I look at Holocaust photographs…I think to myself, There but for the grace of God goes my own mother—and by extension, myself.'”
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For one short story, Veterans were so enthusiastic they found themselves researching names and symbols before and after their discussion. The most thrilling testaments come from the veterans themselves. The professor, one Veteran said, “was energetic, excited and open-minded. She made us feel like her students in her university class.” He continued, “You’ve created a marvelous and exciting opportunity for us to engage our minds, and in ways that most of us haven’t for quite some time. It was awesome to see and feel the critical thinking being done, and to see the creative juices flow!”
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Felix writes about Steelcase CEO Jim Keane’s blogpost for the Drucker Society Europe: “He makes an important contribution to the discussion of meaning in the workplace.” Meanwhile, Ann reflects on modernist artist Joaquín Torres-García, Capria thinks about the past and Jessica brings an infographic on parenting to the fore.
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The payoff for good, mindful work is a return to our senses. More than this: the labor that often goes unseen or unrecognized itself has many virtues, many hidden stores of knowledge the like of which the rest of us can only imagine. Nina MacLaughlin examines this often unseen work, and her book, Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter, offers insightful glimpses into mentorship, craftsmanship, and the rewards and difficulty inherent to learning.
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Food is legacy, history and culture – both personal and generational. It’s an invitation to link to other human beings across lines of difference: “breaking bread together” is as powerful an image of peace as the extension of the olive branch (wait … an olive branch?). But food (and its preparation) is work – real work – that connects the heart, the hands and the soul in the most essentially human of activities.
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Talking about literature helps us develop complex skills such as “critical analysis”: the ability to see beneath the surface, to reason through the meaning of details, and to situate the object of analysis within a larger context. It enables vital, careful thinking about texts, yes, but also about people, organizations, experiences. We all become better employees and co-workers, friends and citizens, mothers and fathers, when we improve and refine our ability to understand what’s around us through observation and thoughtful analysis.
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Katherine Paterson, winner of two Newbery Awards and two National Book Awards, wrote, “When I read . . . John Fowles’ Daniel Martin, I hear a symphony orchestra. When I read my own Bridge to Terabithia, I hear a flute solo unaccompanied.” These flute solos are valuable material–entertaining, inspiring, uplifting and thought provoking–in and of themselves. This week, board member Karen Nestor writes about the 10 children’s books she would bring to a desert island.
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We were honored to be featured in The Huffington Post last week by Kimberly Rae Connor, blogger and Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of San Francisco’s Department of Public and Nonprofit Administrations–and we are more pleased to republish the article here. As Kimberly writes: “While opinion writers across the media have begun supporting and expanding humanities offerings as preparation for work and life, most have neglected to consider those who seldom get past the academic threshold in the first place but whose journeys have taken them to the workplace. Books@Work corrects that oversight. They recognize that 60% of workers in the U.S. do not have access to higher education. Many front line, blue collar and even middle management workers lack structured opportunities to engage in intellectual adventures by way of formal education and to benefit from the kinds of skill, knowledge, confidence, and empathy building experiences that can be elicited from reading and discussing literature.”
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