Class Matters
As part of the college’s year-long Critical Encounters exploration of Poverty and Privilege, the Journalism Department gave each of our students starting in the Fall 2007 semester the book “Class Matters” and asked them to read and reflect on it. We also asked each of these new student to write a short personal essay about how the issues raised in the book affected their own lives.
Members of the Journalism Faculty read the essays and responded individually to each student. Now we have selected 14 of the essays for inclusion in this special web publication.
The two crucial words of the Columbia College Chicago Journalism Department’s mission statement are excellence and inclusion. The breadth, depth and caliber of these essays demonstrate that these newest members of our community are critical thinkers. We expect them to become ethical, thoughtful and creative journalists who will, indeed, “author the culture of their times,” as the College mission statement reads.
To put these essays in context, here is the description of the original assignment from
The New York Times:
“A team of reporters spent more than a year exploring ways that class - defined as a combination of income, education, wealth and occupation - influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of unbounded opportunity.”
These New York Times reports were later compiled into the book “Class Matters.” Times editors also created a free interactive website to continue the discussion:
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html
Members of the Journalism Faculty read the essays and responded individually to each student. Now we have selected 14 of the essays for inclusion in this special web publication.
The two crucial words of the Columbia College Chicago Journalism Department’s mission statement are excellence and inclusion. The breadth, depth and caliber of these essays demonstrate that these newest members of our community are critical thinkers. We expect them to become ethical, thoughtful and creative journalists who will, indeed, “author the culture of their times,” as the College mission statement reads.
To put these essays in context, here is the description of the original assignment from
The New York Times:
“A team of reporters spent more than a year exploring ways that class - defined as a combination of income, education, wealth and occupation - influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of unbounded opportunity.”
These New York Times reports were later compiled into the book “Class Matters.” Times editors also created a free interactive website to continue the discussion:
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html