| Description |
xi, 179 pages ; 25 cm |
| Contents |
Machine derived contents note: Table of contents for Improving poor people : the welfare state, the "underclass," and urban schools as history / Michael B. Katz. -- Bibliographic record and links to related information available from the Library of Congress catalog -- Information from electronic data provided by the publisher. May be incomplete or contain other coding. -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix -- Introduction 3 -- CHAPTER ONE. The Welfare State 19 -- CHAPTER TWO. The "Underclass" 60 -- CHAPTER THREE. Urban Schools 99 -- CHAPTER FOUR. Surviving Poverty 144 -- Index 173 -- Library of Congress subject headings for this publication: Public welfare United States History, Urban poor United States History, Urban schools United States History, Social history, Social policy |
| Summary |
Uniquely informed by his personal involvement, each chapter also illustrates the interpretive power of history by focusing on a strand of social policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: social welfare from the poorhouse era through the New Deal, ideas about poverty from the undeserving poor to the "underclass," and the emergence of public education through the radical school reform movement now at work in Chicago |
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"There are places where history feels irrelevant, and America's inner cities are among them," acknowledges Michael Katz, in expressing the tensions between activism and scholarship. But this major historian of urban poverty realizes that the pain in these cities has its origins in the American past. To understand contemporary poverty, he looks particularly at an old attitude: because many nineteenth-century reformers traced extreme poverty to drink, laziness, and other forms of bad behavior, they tried to use public policy and philanthropy to improve the character of poor people, rather than to attack the structural causes of their misery. Showing how this misdiagnosis has afflicted today's welfare and educational systems, Katz draws on his own experiences to introduce each of four topics - the welfare state, the "underclass" debate, urban school reform, and the strategies of survival used by the urban poor |
| Analysis |
Poor persons History |
|
United States |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Public welfare -- United States -- History.
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Social history.
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Social policy.
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Urban poor -- United States -- History.
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Urban schools -- United States -- History.
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| LC no. |
94031111 |
| ISBN |
0691016054 (paperback) |
|
0691029946 (alk. paper) |
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