Class meeting this week is on Zoom.
Class begins January 19 at 6:00 pm and lasts until 9:30 pm
(in actual practice, we will probably conclude the Zoom session before 8:00 so that you will have time to work on the Canvas discussion boards this week)
Class session lasts from January 19 at 6:00 p.m. to January 26 at 5:59 p.m.
Discussion board active until
February 2 at 11:59 p.m.
This page describes what you should do in this first session.
Objectives of this session
- Meet your classmates; learn their names, something about their geographical and family background; something about their current study interests; and something about their interest in social work, and any experience they may have in service-related activities.
- Understand what you will be doing in this class; what books are we reading, what assignments will you be writing, what tests you will be taking, how you will graded, what grades you might expect, and be familiar with the schedule for when we are meeting face-to-face on campus and when we are meeting online. Learn about resources in the Canvas online learning environment.
- Begin reading Economix
- Understand some of the big ideas of economics contributed by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo.
- Figure out what sort of themes for polices and services we might want to make our focus for in-depth knowledge this semester.
- Encourage a commitment by students to the principle that social workers are ethically obliged to advocate for policies and programs that are best for their clients, which requires of social work students that they learn the basics about what policies and programs are available, how those policies and programs can be evaluated, and what controversies and suggestions exist surrounding existing policies and services and social problems.
- Understand the theory of George Lakoff that American conservatives and liberals tend to use metaphors to intuitively understand how values are connected to words and policies.
- Understand some of the basic differences in how conservatives, liberals, radicals, and “green alternative’’ persons see various questions about how programs and services ought to be provided.
- Understand that divisive partisanship is a problem, and social workers need to learn how to communicate with persons who may be highly committed to partisan frameworks for understanding social problems, social policies, and issues around taxation and government spending. That is, we must consider how to frame issues in moral narratives so that opposition to good policies will be reduced and support for good policies will increase.
Time Budget for 11 hours
3h 30m Class meeting on Zoom and time spent on discussion boards.
2h 45m Read pages 8-129 in Economix: How Our Economy Works: In words and pictures by Michael Goodwin. Read also the Obamacare and Social Security description on the Economix website.
1h Study the syllabus and any lectures, announcements, or materials the professor has prepared as online resources for the first session.
2h 15m Study ideology by exposing yourselves to ideological examples:
1h 30m Study what George Lakoff says about metaphorical thinking and ideology
What will happen in the class meeting at the start of this session?
During our Zoom class meeting, I expect to use time in the following ways:
- I will introduce myself, so you can know more about me.
- I will ask each student to speak very briefly to give an introduction. I generally record these introductions and use them to create a class roster. I also tend to photograph the students. If you already have an avatar image or profile image you use in Canvas, I will use that, or if you send me an avatar image as an e-mail attachment or in Facebook Messenger or in Google Hangouts or uploaded in Canvas, I will use whatever you send me, but if you have no existing image and do not want the hassle of sending me an image, the class roster will use an image from a screen capture or photograph I take in the first session.
Your introductions should cover: 1) your name; 2) your family situation (family of origin and/or current household arrangements); 3) your interest in social work; 4) your reasoning for taking this class; 5) something about your sense of place, as, for example, where you grew up, or where you feel safe and comfortable at “at home” in general. You are also very welcome to name some of your interests, hobbies, and those sorts of things. Introductions take between 30 seconds and 3 minutes. Everyone is expected to introduce themselves to the class.
- I will review the syllabus, the assignments, my methods for grading, and the books we will be reading
- We will talk about why it is important to understand politics and how the political processes lead to the programs and services that help our clients.
- I will also present the idea that you must understand the ethical and moral priorities of people so that when you advocate for better polices/services or just better treatment for your clients, you will be able to use language that will appeal to your audience. One of the core skills in policy practice is having some ability in the field of rhetoric. You must understand your audience.
- I will describe what we do in the first week of class.
- I will introduce the class blog, where you will be able to read assignments completed by students who took this course in past semesters.
What must you read this week?
Read the first half (up to page 129) in Economix: How Our Economy Works: In words and pictures by Michael Goodwin.
Read the Economix website explanation of Social Security and Obamacare.
Read the syllabus
Your session activity assignments also require some reading.
Activities
I expect you to use a couple hours (or a little more than a couple hours) to explore ideology.
To understand the liberal ideology, I want you to either watch a lecture by George Lakoff entitled “Retaking Political Discourse” or else read an essay he wrote about Donald Trump entitled “Understanding Donald Trump”. I have you watch the rather old lecture because this is a lecture where he describes the basic principles of his theory. If you want to watch a more recent lecture (not assigned—this is an optional suggestion) you may find you like his 2017 talk “The Present Policial Divide: What To Do Now”
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To understand the conservative ideology, I want you to watch some of the five minute lectures at PragerU. There are a few good (information is good and logic is used with fairness) lectures there (e.g. the one by Ty Seidule), but most of the content is hard-core right-wing conservatism. Watch three videos at least (they are all very short). Chose from these ideological videos that touch on topics we will cover in this course (find them at https://www.prageru.com/), and here are some examples of titles you might look for:
Are the Police Racist? (Heather MacDonald, and Will Witt both present on that topic: look under the video category “race relations”—and if you want to know more from reputable sources, becaues PragerU is known as being propaganda and not good information, I'll recommend the review by Daniel Lomax, or the older review by Simon Hedlin);
Can the Government Run the Economy? (Steve Forbes, look under the category “economics”);
Who’s More Compassionate: the Left or the Right? (William Voegeli, in “political science”); Lemonade Stand Economics; Socialism Makes People Selfish; Black Fathers Matter; Why Private Investment Works and Government Investment Doesn’t; Government: Is it Ever Big Enough?; How Big Should Government Be? Left vs. Right #1.
I should point out that serious intellectual conservatives I know detest PragerU and are embarassed by it.
Yet, mixed in with the distortions and false information and unfair characterizations (straw man arguments) you will hear in those PragerU videos some points that are sensible and truthful, and some points that persons who are not conservative ought to consider as they explore their policy preferences.
By the way, a student’s response to one PragerU video sparked a response from me, which is up on our class blog.
David Brooks is another good source to learn about the Conservative ideology. I highly recommend (but do not require you to read or listen to) his lament in The Atlantic of December 8, 2021 What Happened to American Conservatism?
Libertarian ideology is mostly the same as conservative ideology, excepting that Liberterians are (to their credit) less interested in promoting traditional values or cherishing power hierarchies, and they tend to be immune to the conservative idolotry of our military (my step-father was a medical officer in the Air Force, and my oldest brother was in the Air Force Pararescue, and one of my nephews is an officer in the Army Corps of Enginers—I am not ignorant of the qualities, good and bad, of our military). Since most social welfare issues require government spending, Liberterians tend to be harsh critics of public money used to support the sort of people who get services from social workers, which is why for our purposes in a class like this, Liberterians can be lumped together with conservatives. A critique of some contemporary “right libertarians” by Youtuber Adam Something is fairly good.
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To understand radical ideology, I want you to read How I became a Socialist (Jack London).
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To understand Green ideology, I want you to read the Ten Key Values of the Green Party. Most green parties around the world have similar core values (here are core values from Greens in the UK, and here is the Green Party ideology of Sweden). Just so you know my biases, in the 1980s I was a youth member of the Green Committees of Correspondance while in high school and university, and I opposed the formation of a Green party to run in elections; nevertheless, I have often voted for Green Party candidates in local and national elections.
Some significant “Green philosophers” include Rudolf Bahro (read about him in this doctoral thesis by Gordon W. Smith, or these blog posts here, and here) ,
and Arne Naess (obituary from The Guardian, and this memorial from the ISEE), and
Murray Bookchin ( read this article from the London Review of Books or read his work at the anarchist library)
And you might like to learn about John Rensenbrink, Winfried Kretschmann, Alexander Van der Bellen, the New Zealand Green Party, and Annalena Baerbock.
With the class discussion board, do not worry if you cannot find the time to answer every question I have posted as a prompt; just keep track of your time and answer what you can. The idea is that the combination of our official Zoom meeting and your time on the discussion boards ought to sum up to 3 hours and 30 minutes (minute some time for a break). So, if we meet as a class on Zoom for two hours, please answer what you can in 90 minutes, and if we use 90 minutes in our Zoom meeting, please use two hours on the discussion board. You will need time to read the prompts, answer some of the prompts, read the discussion that follows, and post responses and replies and questions to some of your classmates and the professor in the online discussion. Ideally, you will spend a bit more time answering and replying and commenting with your classmates in the discussion (making it an actual discussion) and not spend the majority of your time answering my prompts and then ignoring the posts made by your classmates. You are not expected to read all the posts in the discussion board. Just keep track of your time and put in the full amount of time, and read and respond to what you can within the time budget.
You should post responses to some of the discussion prompts in Canvass, and also respond to some of your classmates when they post on Canvas discussion boards.
Working on your Assignments
As always, I invite you to engage in class discussion on the Canvas discussion board. The discussion questions for this week are these:
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Introduce yourself to the class. Say a few things about yourself and who you are. You ought to cover a few things, including your family and geographical background (where are you living, where did you grow up, and let us know something about either your current household or your family-of-origin, if you are willing to share), your interest in social work, and your personal interests or hobbies or passions.
I may use your answers to this discussion question in an on-line class roster available only to students in this class.
Share with the class a photograph or set of photographs to present yourself to us. You might have a portrait, a recent photograph of yourself, an old family picture, or some photographs of your family, your pet(s), your home, your room, or some place or event that is special to you. It's best to upload JPEG images rather than Word Documents with photos pasted into pages, but do whatever works for you.
As you read the first half of the book Economix, find one example of economic injustice or unfairness. Describe it and share the page number of the book where it is mentioned. Why is it unfair? After sharing the example of injustice or unfairness, offer your opinion on the uses of economics to understand unfairness and injustice, and consider how or whether you believe the field of economics can provide social workers with insights into how to enhance justice and fairness in our society. For example, do you think the field of economics is concerned with the “fair” distribution of resources, the elimination of deprivation and poverty, the circumstances that enhance human flourishing? Or, do you perceive the field of economics to be mainly a sort of pseudo-religion in which acolytes preach the doctrine of greed and wealth accumulation? Or, just what do you think of economics as a discipline? Social work is a discipline and profession with values, but what values do you perceive are implied in the value-judgments found in Economix?
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Which PragerU five-minute videos did you watch? What did you notice about them? Some of the videos on that site are “good” in the sense that they offer well-supported and rational arguments based on facts, and are fair-minded. Many others (most of the videos on that site) simply offer opinion presented as if it were fact, and come across more like religious teachings or propaganda than an intellectually-rigorous lesson or lecture. Try to analyze one of the videos at PragerU that you watched, and explain its merits and flaws. Was it, in your opinion, a convincing and well-argued presentation with good information backing up the positions of the speaker, or was it one of the weaker propaganda pieces? How do you distinguish between the better and worse arguments?
Political viewpoints offer people starting assumptions, and if you begin with conservative or liberal starting assumptions about values, it’s possible to offer fair-minded and rational arguments for perspectives on your side that will seem wrong to others because they don’t share your starting-point assumptions. However, it’s also possible to toss out logic and facts and just pour forth a worldview that is unmoored from reality or rational thought, and such presentations are often just restatements of the starting assumptions or values, or else they show a fanatical devotion to the speaker’s ideology that seems to blind the speaker from considering reality or the potential merits of opposing views. As a college-educated person, I hope you will go through life able to distinguish between claims and arguments that are made by re-affirming starting assumptions and values without offering logical analysis and those claims that offer fair presentations of conflicting perspectives and then use facts and logic to justify support for one perspective over the other.
Paraphrase in your own words some of the things you have learned from George Lakoff from his December 1st (2011) lecture or his essay about Trump from the summer of 2016. After you have given in your own words the essence of some point that Lakoff has made, offer your own interpretation, critique, evaluation, or application of the idea you’ve presented from Lakoff. It would be especially nice if you considered the implication for social workers.
There has been growing interest in democratic socialism in the United States corresponding to the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in the 2016 elections, the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the coming-of-age of a cohort of young adults who have grown up in a time of stagnant wage growth and generally disappointing economic conditions. (The recession of 2008-2009 and the slow economic recovery through 2012 shaped the views of many young persons; and dissatisfaction is probably also increased because almost all economic growth in the past 10 years has occurred in the coastal cities, with rural areas everywhere—and even the cities of the Midwest and South—enjoying very little wage growth; while even in coastal cities the rising costs of housing have somewhat offset the gains in income). Having read Jack London’s short essay on why he became a socialist, consider why many younger people today might be calling themselves socialists. What has changed in the century since Jack London wrote his essay. Are the basic motives pushing people toward leftist ideologies (or conservative/libertarian ideologies) similar now as they were then?
Reading the ten key values of the Green Party, consider how those values fit with your own personal ethics and the professional ethics of social workers. The Green movement and Green parties across the world generally play a minor role in politics, and do not generally win many elections (yet, Greens made major gains in the recent European Union Parliament elections, and recently Austria elected a Green to a high political office that was largely ceremonial, and in the 1990s the Green Party in Germany governed in coalition with the larger and more powerful Social Democrat party). Generally, Greens are in the opposition or rule as junior partners in coalitions with more mainstream social democratic parties; and Greens occasionally win seats on city councils or local school boards. Do you think there are points in the ten key values that make the Green Party unpopular? What other factors do you think are contributing to the fact that the Green Party in the United States is marginalized, and Green Parties in general across the world are not more popular than they are?
Having read the syllabus for this course, and perhaps having taken the pre-test, what are some of your thoughts on this course and the upcoming semester? What questions do you have?
What current events related to social welfare policy or services have caught your attention? Did you take note of any news items in the summer related to social work or social welfare policies and services? What are your thoughts concerning current events related to economics, welfare policies, and social and human services?
Although that is pretty much it for your assigned activities, you may want to do the following:
- Think about what you want to write about in your first reaction essay. Study the class blog to see what other students wrote.
- Consider what you want to do with your three policy papers. You probably will need 8-12 hours to write each of them, so start on those early if you like.
