This week’s reading of Austerity Blues provided detailed information on policies and reform that I had no knowledge of prior to the reading. Although the reading was easier to digest than The Undercommons, the book provided a lot of information to consume. The reading explores the timeline of public policy, technology and privatization that has affected public education. The book explains how politics influence our personal lives, especially how we navigate education, they write, “It was in the public university during that era where we learned that the external world of political economy and our own interior lives were inseparable. These worlds had to be linked to be understood. That struggle for unification has marked much of our academic work ever since” (2). The decade of the 1960s opened the door for students to protest and advocate for the many intersections of their identities. The emergence of the SNCC in conversation with The Black Panther Party, Civil Rights Movement and Anti-War Movements illustrated just how much “the external world of political economy” is a part of students “interior lives.” Carmen Kynard’s book, Vernacular Insurrections: Race, Black Protest, and the New Century in Composition-Literacies Studies, explores twenty-first-century literacies, specifically those created by Black liberation movements, and how they work to impact our personal lives and academic institutions. Kynard analyzes the link between our personal lives and education through the lens of discourse and language. How we maneuver academic institutions is influenced by politics of our identities. 

The reading explores how policy impacts our education system. It analyzes historical policies that once promoted free and/or accessible public education that has since been reformed to negatively impact students’ quality of education, they write, “Student per capita public spending in higher education, for example, has declined over the past fifteen years. The reduction of investment has in turn had a significant impact on the quality of education as class sizes increase, pedagogy is mechanized, and academic content is increasingly standardized or watered down. The social reproduction of college students from one generation to the next is less likely as a result to promote the kind of classroom work and faculty engagement that sharpen students’ critical thinking and writing skills. This shift in education quality also has negative consequences for many college graduates, who are increasingly unable to function as informed citizens and to take on challenging job roles” (16). The ways in which the country’s education policies have been reformed and spending defunded causes a number of harmful effects. For one, large class sizes reduce the number of students that are able to receive a nurturing education. Class sizes also affect the efficiency of teachers to execute a lesson plan that aids the many learning styles of students. The reduction of engagement tailored to “sharpen students’ critical thinking and writing skills” trickles down to negatively impact college students. How can students be expected to perform as well-learned individuals participating in society if our education system does not foster their responsibilities? Our country’s political and social system is more concerned with tackling issues of crime and punishment rather than preventative measures. If more money was used to aid preventing crime and unlawful acts students would have the opportunity to properly transition into post-graduate society.

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