Our kids
"A groundbreaking examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility. It's the American dream: get a good education, work hard, buy a house, and achieve prosperity and success. This is the America we believe in--a nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last twenty-five years we have seen a disturbing "opportunity gap" emerge. Americans have always believed in equality of opportunity, the idea that all kids, regardless of their family background, should have a decent chance to improve their lot in life. Now, this central tenet of the American dream seems no longer true or at the least, much less true than it was. Robert Putnam--about whom The Economist said, "his scholarship is wide-ranging, his intelligence luminous, his tone modest, his prose unpretentious and frequently funny"--offers a personal but also authoritative look at this new American crisis. Putnam begins with his high school class of 1959 in Port Clinton, Ohio. By and large the vast majority of those students--"our kids"--went on to lives better than those of their parents. But their children and grandchildren have had harder lives amid diminishing prospects. Putnam tells the tale of lessening opportunity through poignant life stories of rich and poor kids from cities and suburbs across the country, drawing on a formidable body of research done especially for this book.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
11mentions
8people
2015–2022years
55% recommend45% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If you control for income, though, out-of-wedlock birth rates for black and white mothers are now very similar, though. “Our Kids” by Robert Putnam is a good summary.
- The author provides laughably little justification for his claims for the causes of these phenomena.
For a more meaty examination, I’d recommend Robert Putnam’s “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.”
- The author of this article used Charles Murray’s Coming Apart as a source. He’s a pretty… controversial figure. The counterpart to him that is more progressive and less controversial is Robert Putnam. His books are a lot more digestible. I’d suggest looking up talks with the author on YouTube. (He even has a debate with Charles Murray - as they are somewhat of friends)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609334-our-kids
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50124402-the-upswing
One thing I want to mention here is that it seems that social effects come before economic effects. People go through social change and then the economics follow later. That’s the one thing I would take away from the books/talks. Somewhat ironic to many here.
- This is true for core instruction but not sports and other extracurricular, which are Pay-fors in many parts of the US. Robert Putnam's "Our Kids" (great book!) is eloquent on the costs and consequences.
- This reads like a satirical version of Robert Putnam's book Our Kids. I highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in the topic and likes their data interwoven with personal stories to bring it to life.
- I agree the This American Life stories were pretty good. They were based on a pro-publica story which has background statistics that make the picture more interesting:
http://www.propublica.org/article/ferguson-school-segregatio...
There was also recently this long article in the Tampa Bay times that I found at least as insightful, and with more perspective:
http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2015/investigations/pinella...
My concerns with this coverage is that they oversimplify the problems in their desire to find a solution (especially TAL). I'd also recommend the book 'Our Kids':
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Kids-American-Dream-Crisis/dp/1476...
Which is far more comprehensive but spectacularly depressing.
