Event

Schools and Solidarity Education and the Labor Movement in Historical Perspective with Tina Groeger

GSE and Penn History
Date: Wednesday, November 8, 2023
Time: 12pm
Location: Penn GSE, Room 356

What is the role of education in social change? One underappreciated relationship between schools and social change in US history has been its powerful, ambivalent impact on the US labor movement. In the early twentieth century, the expansion of schooling dramatically reshaped labor markets in nearly all economic sectors, in some cases providing students with new tools for organizing and advocacy, in other cases undercutting existing union power and consolidating managerial control. From then and into the 21st century, K-12 schools and institutions of higher education have acted both as forces opposing worker organizing, as well as important sites for that very organizing. Reflecting on this history offers important lessons for those committed to social justice today.