what's goin' on?
Where do I start?
I watch a lot of early morning PBS and today it was about the Lowell Factory Girls and the contribution they made to the USA. This was for high school teachers to learn how to present the topic in their classrooms.
First the good news. It's nice women's labor is being recognized. But the sweatshop (word never used in the program) conditions set up to efficiently maximize profits for early industrialists aka the people that were "making America great." The thinking that promoted ideas of class, ethnic background and gender roles and ranks was and is responsible for much of the illness and inequity in the world today.
Actual letters, business stats and the like were used to understand this time in the history and yet the generalizing of the individual experience was part of the pro and con debate the teachers presented to familiarize themselves with the issues. The Prof in charge brought up how it allowed these women to start earning money and get into the big city and out from the toils of farm labor. Yet they went from paterfamilia to pater-overseer who had them standing 12 hours a day with one day off to get herded to church, and when they tried to strike against the conditions they were beat down and ended up worse off. The outcome of the program, under the "Capitalism has won" theory of systems (quote the Prof) was especially biased by a read from an autobiographical account of one of the women calling it the best days of her life. This because she had met so many vibrant, intelligent and strong women at Lowell. This was significant because it justified the the ugly usury as a step up in the grand American saga.
I am amazed the point that wasn't brought up was that she would have met the same kind of women if she had been allowed to go to school or allowed to find her place in the world outside of the social construct that saw women as a source of production (child bearing) and so was owned as were the children. This coming from the prior traditions that created the inequalities to begin with....but that is another day.
I watch a lot of early morning PBS and today it was about the Lowell Factory Girls and the contribution they made to the USA. This was for high school teachers to learn how to present the topic in their classrooms.
First the good news. It's nice women's labor is being recognized. But the sweatshop (word never used in the program) conditions set up to efficiently maximize profits for early industrialists aka the people that were "making America great." The thinking that promoted ideas of class, ethnic background and gender roles and ranks was and is responsible for much of the illness and inequity in the world today.
Actual letters, business stats and the like were used to understand this time in the history and yet the generalizing of the individual experience was part of the pro and con debate the teachers presented to familiarize themselves with the issues. The Prof in charge brought up how it allowed these women to start earning money and get into the big city and out from the toils of farm labor. Yet they went from paterfamilia to pater-overseer who had them standing 12 hours a day with one day off to get herded to church, and when they tried to strike against the conditions they were beat down and ended up worse off. The outcome of the program, under the "Capitalism has won" theory of systems (quote the Prof) was especially biased by a read from an autobiographical account of one of the women calling it the best days of her life. This because she had met so many vibrant, intelligent and strong women at Lowell. This was significant because it justified the the ugly usury as a step up in the grand American saga.
I am amazed the point that wasn't brought up was that she would have met the same kind of women if she had been allowed to go to school or allowed to find her place in the world outside of the social construct that saw women as a source of production (child bearing) and so was owned as were the children. This coming from the prior traditions that created the inequalities to begin with....but that is another day.
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