TFA Update: Don't Fear the Reaper

In one month, I will be preparing to leave for five sunny (read: blistering) weeks in Tempe. I'm applying to schools and my anxiety is growing day-by-day as I shift nervously in my seat updating the Denver Public Schools (DPS) site. There are contingencies if I do not secure a position. I am endeavoring to remain optimistic and taking comfort in the knowledge that positions will continue to open. And, no, it's not dissimulation. My next few weeks remain busy as I conclude any responsibilities with K Plus and prepare for induction and institute. Induction begins on 8 June with a week of packed administrative and team-building activities for new corps members (CMS), including dinners hosted by current CMS and a Rockies game on the last day.

TFA structures the five weeks in Phoenix to challenge CMS with an intensive schedule and work load that harnesses their driven, committed tendencies to mold them into teachers. At some point, I will be teaching an early childhood education (ECE) or elementary classroom. My preference remains for ECE even though the realities of the job market may compel me to find a position as an elementary teacher. I received the recognition of excellence from ETS for scoring in the top 15% of test takers for the Praxis II 0014 for elementary education. Part of me dreads the possibility of retaking the Praxis or Place if my endorsement advances from ECE to middle or high school.

My goal now is to post reviews of institute when time permits. TFA has not shared information of institute beside the readings and tasks in the pre-institute readings, so I'm at a loss for specifics. Kate will visit me over the fourth of July weekend for a side trip to the Grand Canyon and Sedona. At some point I will explore the greater Phoenix area when I can wedge time in to what I am led to believe is a demanding period where CMS encounter heaps of work. The dorm experience is entirely new to me. The only remote point of intrigue are the pools and an unlimited meal card. The pools for obvious reasons, and I always found a meal card fascinating since I attribute a fair amount of spending to food.

Oy. My e-mail digest from CO TFA informed me that I need to ready seven copies of my transcripts for licensing in Colorado. Between the readings and activities, I will have a busy month. I wish my allergies would let up so I could find some excitement and motivation rather than this all-encompassing fog that settles on my mind.

Joyce Appleby, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism [Kicking Ass]

Joyce Appleby, emeritus historian at UCLA, tackles a mammoth subject with a history of capitalism, and she treats it well in the 436 pages. She tries to restore contingency and insert culture into the rise of capitalism with the logic that "capitalism is a cultural force and not simply an economic one, it cannot be explained by material factors alone" and a capitalist culture could ascend only after wearing down pre-existing/medieval norms pertaining to commerce, land use, and social relations (26). In arguing this cultural and contingent interpretation, she dispatches, to varying degrees, three titans: Smith, Marx, Weber. What follows is a thorough explanation of how capitalism ingrained itself and triumphed by adaption to whatever circumstances arose as it shifted from its origin in England to the US and, one presumes based on the final chapter, China.

England's agricultural revolution--while not necessarily a direct antecedent to its more famous industrial cousin--altered society in a crucial manner by boosting harvests, detaching families from the land (sending them across the seas and itinerantly chasing labor in England), commercializing land, and producing wage labor with an attendant and subsequent appearance of consumption as a robust form of economic activity. From that initial burst, capitalism speedily conquered medieval forms of intellectual, social, and cultural stratification within England that stood as a roadblocks to its dominance. The United States and a unified Germany slid into place when England's capitalist star dimmed, with the American form exploding in a super nova that positioned it as the world's leader before World War I and piloted the unknown growth from the 1950s until stagflation signaled its death in the 1970s. After 1975, she enters mushy territory and powers through much of the 1980s to preach the gospel of the internet and globalization before wrapping it up in hurried fashion with a description of China and India. I presume she tacked on the final chapter "Of Crises and Critics" as an afterthought when the house nearly folded in 2008.

I skimmed a couple of reviews that credited her for a balanced approach that grants equal time to proponents and antagonists alike all the while shedding a triumphalist tack. That's not the book I read. In fact, it celebrates capitalism and its innovators without dwelling on those who stagger under its weight without benefiting from its liberation. Then why, you might ask, do Americans cling to this economic system? In her words, "the American public has resoundingly supported capitalism and its demands on society in part because they have not been exposed to the withering commentary of critics" (311). I would agree with that statement, and bolster it by saying that works such as Relentless Revolution contribute to that trend by neglecting capitalism's critics by portraying a flowery history that precipitated national greatness.

I wanted to like this book and spent far too much time reading it closely. The book closes with two pages answering my questions in cursory fashion on capitalism and democracy, its own inherent democratizing tendencies, or it as an economic and cultural system. I would have enjoyed a bit of theorizing on capitalism in place of the oft encyclopedic chronicling, and I cannot rip Appleby too hard for not writing the book I desired when it wasn't her intention. I am, however, able to target her cheerleading of capitalism and its adherents and innovators. Relentless Revolution would have been better had she explored the duality of capitalism (especially during and after American capitalism's efflorescence in the mid-twentieth century) that provides opportunity and pitfalls instead of dry descriptions of currency, financial innovation, and similar tedious insight into the levers of capitalism.

Appleby made one mistake between that caught my eye, even though I'm sure there are more buried in the text. It's Thorstein Veblen, not Thornstein Veblen, and the quote that follows on 188 is mistakenly attributed to Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy in the end notes and not Veblen's Theory of Business Enterprise. In fairness to her, writing 436 pages is a task that most people could not accomplish and mistakes are bound to result.

Appleby's narrative is well known but written with accessible prose, even though it elides the negatives in favor of a sunny retelling. I'm glad I finished the book and I appreciate her infusion of contingency and culture into this discussion. Would I recommend it to friends? Most likely not.

Banksy