Lesson 1 - Mobility
Lesson Plan
This lesson is the first in a series that examines mobility and cascading. Students explore these concepts in the context of biographical stories of real people that involve significant ups and downs in economic status, social position, and health. Then, using an interactive infographic that shows income mobility, students consider unequal patterns in mobility. The lesson aims to show students that social position is more than a snapshot in time. Instead, we can think about strings of events and how policies can play a role in the ups and downs of a life.
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- Understand the concepts of mobility and cascading and be able to apply them to specific life stories
- Analyze patterns in mobility using an infographic and come to understand some consistent patterns across race and gender
- Collect and compare the stories we tell about mobility beyond the American Dream bootstrap story: tales of anxiety, hope, resignation, cascading, stagnation, transformation, and more.
- What is mobility? Why does it happen?
- Who tends to move up? Down? Stay the same?
- Why does cascading happen? What could prevent it?
- Why might we want a society in which people can move social position?
- Social position: While each person is a distinct individual, we also each occupy a place in society based on how much money, status and resources we have. While where people begin does not determine what happens to them, it has a big impact on the kinds of obstacles they face.
- Mobility: Movement between social positions, particularly economic positions, such as from working class to middle class.
- Cascading: When one event triggers several that follow it, leading to a change in social position. For example, a lost job that leads to lost health insurance and the inability to pay for necessary medical care.
For most people, social position changes throughout their life. There will be times when it seems like "the sky is the limit" and moments when they lose ground. Reading the real-life stories of people can show us how people move between social positions, and how, sometimes, life can “cascade” as one crisis tumbles onto another.
In this first activity, students are going to read two life histories. As they read them, be sure to have them make note of any questions that come up.
In groups, have students map the life described in one of the biographical stories by drawing a line on the worksheet. Label the person’s starting point, and any key moments. Once the groups have drawn the map, talk as a class about why each group drew it the way they did.
As a class, discuss these questions: What are the challenges the people in these stories faced? What triggered a downward cascade? What might have stopped or altered the course of cascading events? How many times does the economic position of the person change? How does the person work to recover from a cascade? What are the resources that are available to help? When did the person make choices? What choices were made for them?
The myth of the American Dream tells us that if someone works hard, they can climb up the economic ladder. But hard work is not enough to explain patterns of mobility. While people work hard everywhere, few people move up and most stay the same or move down. Using the article "Income Mobility Charts for Girls, Asian-Americans and Other Groups. Or Make Your Own" from The New York Times, have students look for patterns in who is economically mobile and in which direction. Students should use the infographic from the article, found here.
The New York Times infographic shows patterns in changes to income between childhood (based on what parents made) and adulthood. What patterns do students notice in where people start? In where they finish? In the relationship between the two? Where do the people in those stories that students have just read fit into this picture?
Discussion question: The American Dream promises mobility: people who start at the bottom can pull themselves up through hard work and careful saving. But there are other stories too. What stories have students heard - from family, friends, or in books or other media - about the way that people's economic position changes? Can they think of anyone who has lost ground? Gotten stuck? Had a major change?
- To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
- Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut