Amy E. Slaton is a Professor of History in the Department of History and Politics at Drexel University. For more information on her scholarship and research, see the "About" page or download her CV. For information on her teaching, please visit her official university Web page.
December 17th, 2010

Misusing History (or: Mayor Bloomberg ♥ Henry Ford!)

Innovating Then…and Now? (from eriecanal.org)

It’s official:  “Innovation” is going viral among  American politicians.  “Yankee ingenuity” is back, with a vengeance.  Our famous inventive spirit will beat back all comers in the quickening global race for economic dominance. Brainpower is the new horsepower.

I’m now completely convinced that the anxiety/enthusiasm recipe I wrote about [...]

December 8th, 2010

Our Borders, Ourselves?: Rethinking China’s Test Scores

Be Afraid: China’s “stellar” performance on recent standardized tests, described in yesterday’s New York Times (“Top Test Scores from Shanghai Stun Educators,” by Sam Dillon), is apparently another sign that America is being “out-educated.”  We are at our very own “Sputnik” moment, President Obama tells us, our nation once again threatened by the academic attainments [...]

October 22nd, 2010

Thanks, Mr. Begley, Jr.!

Just how cool is it when, as happened at the White House last week,  President Obama gives  a shout out to technical programs in community colleges?–after all, the guy  has actually met the Mythbusters! But for sheer celebrity glamor, I’ll take Ed Begley, Jr.’s blog over a White House Summit any day.

A staunch advocate [...]

September 28th, 2010

As Chickens Are to Eggs…:Rethinking STEM Labor Supplies

Run, do not walk (or at least link your way quickly),  to David Sirota’s recent Salon column on “The Neo-Liberal Bait-and-Switch: Why Corporate-Friendly Democrats Like to Blame our Schools for Not Producing Enough White-Color Specialists.” (Sirota was also a guest on NPR’s “Tell Me More” today).   His is one of the first discussions of STEM [...]

June 17th, 2010

What is College For? An NPR moment…

A major report came out of Georgetown University yesterday, stressing the necessity for a “closer fit” between industrial workforce needs and the design of higher ed curricula in the U.S.   I don’t quite see how this (not terribly new) recommendation promises much lasting good for either workers or employers: hasn’t industry been trying to minimize the [...]

April 24th, 2010

Nuclear Jobs: Where More is Less…

Renaissance job? (From www.photosfan.com)

In a special section aptly titled, “The Business of Green” (April 22, 2010), the New York Times  gave itself over this week to a story on the resurgence of nuclear power and the “many thousands” of new jobs shortly to be created as the country’s 104 existing nuclear power plants [...]

March 9th, 2010

Atop the Turbine: A Fine View of Community College

 

As we start to see more daily reminders of the critical importance of  junior and community colleges in American job creation and equity –as the recession slogs on without promised new jobs, as the White House actively supports 2-year education–it will be interesting to see how explicitly (or not)  industries associate themselves with this type of education…long treated by [...]

February 26th, 2010

Trade Secrets

Last week, the San Jose Mercury News offered two articles by Mike Swift that are must-reads for anyone concerned with diversity in technical occupations. The title of the first, “Blacks, Latinos and women lose ground at Silicon Valley tech companies,” makes the importance of that piece clear. The newspaper analyzed combined work forces of ten regional companies, including Intel, [...]

January 6th, 2010

Moving Jobs Up the Skill Ladder

In a piece on NPR the other day on Where the Jobs Will be This Decade, Harvard labor economist Lawrence Katz made a vital point about  the “polarization” of American labor markets.  That term might sound dry or technical, but Katz guides us towards some transformative thinking about the current job situation.

Katz explained that without a new [...]