Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day And How They Feel About What They Do By: Studs Terkel

Engaged Employees People are doing repetitive stuff – big people in little assignments grinding away at jobs too small for their souls. People don’t want to work for a company; they want to work for a cause that transcends the dullness of their everyday lives. Studs Terkel Working

Evaluating the Process of the Interview. How did Studs get this person to tell their story? What types of questions do you think he asked?

ROSE HOFFMAN Rose Hoffman, for 35 years a teacher in a poor urban neighborhood, once mostly Polish, now mostly Puerto Rican, denounces her current students and their families in a familiar bitter litany: "There isn't any shame, there isn't any pride" and so on. She is especially disturbed by the way "they" use profanity. And yet, and yet: "I had a fight with my husband the other day," she stops to say, "You know what I said to him? '---- you!' (She laughs.) And I never talked that way. (Laughs again.) I hear it all the time from the students... Now I'm brazen." She is clearly glad, even proud, to be able to say that to her husband. As she tells this story, she realizes "they" have helped her stand up to him- she has been to him what "they" are to her. "Working" is full of luminous moments such as this, moments of self- discovery breaking in on people when they least expect it.

ROSE HOFFMAN "Every morning at nine o'clock we salute the flag. We sing "My Country 'Tis of Thee'." And then we sing the "Star Spangled Banner." It's a dignified exercise. I teach third grade. At 9:15 we start with arithmetic. I have tables fun on the board -- multiplication. You don't say "tables", you say "tables-fun". Everything has to be fun, fun, fun. Then we have a penmanship lesson. There it is in my beautiful handwriting. I tell my kids: "Mrs. Hoffman is here, everybody works. Working is a blessing." But I don't give them assignments over their heads. I give them the rote method. This is very boring, very monotonous, but habit is a great thing for these children. They adore it. Habit, they love habit. The neighborhood is changing. And the type of child is changing, too. Oh, yes, I have seen great changes since I began teaching.

ROSE HOFFMAN I made a big thing about spelling, but they learned by the time I got through, They copied the words till they knew them by heart, Ten times for the dumb ones and twice for the smart, and gold stars were given to those who made sentences too. The way I’ve been teaching for forty-two years, is no longer “effective” or so it appears. There is one little girl who stands out in my mind in all my years of teaching... my favorite Pam. She was special. She never gave anyone any trouble. I run into her now and then. She works as a checker at the Treasure Island supermarket. She never gives anyone any trouble today either. And she has the same smile for everyone.

ROSE HOFFMAN The first rule of education for me was discipline. Discipline is the keynote to learning. Discipline has been the great factor in my life. I discipline myself to do everything—getting up in the morning, walking, dancing, exercise. If you won’t have discipline, you won’t have a nation. We can’t have permissiveness. When someone comes in and says, “Oh, your room is so quiet,” I know I’ve been successful.

PAT ZIMMERMAN Alternative School “Headmaster” or Administrator “I’m a strict kind of teacher” émigré n: someone who leaves one country or region to settle in another Classes segregated by gender Prior experience on the south side Concentration camp: find meaning in it

Questions: Should educational policy be guided by particular political, social, cultural, or other values, and if so, which ones? What role does education play for an individual and for a society? What should we teach in school? How should we teach? What are the roles of teachers? What is actually taught in school? Is education helping to reproduce social and economic inequalities? What approaches should be adopted to improve teaching and learning so that equality of educational opportunity is achieved regardless of race, class, gender, ethnicity, etc?