Hidden Hurdles and Invisible Injuries:
Working Class Students in Higher Education
A talk by Barbara Jensen
MONDAY, APRIL 7, 2003
6 ? 8 p.m.
at Stony Brook Manhattan
401 Park Avenue South (at 28th Street), second floor
New York City
and
TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 2003
Noon - 2p.m.
at the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT)
Melville Library, first floor
Stony Brook University Campus
Barbara Jensen will address the psychological and cultural experiences of
working class students in higher education. She argues that students
from working class backgrounds bring a distinctive culture (habits of
heart and mind) different from - and in some ways opposite to - the
middle-class culture and ethos of the university. These students
experience a cultural clash unacknowledged in higher education, a hidden
form of class struggle that often leads to anomie, survivor guilt,
"imposter syndrome," and quitting school. Jensen will suggest teaching
strategies that help students to integrate new skills and perspectives
with their previous lives.
Barbara Jensen is a community and counseling psychologist in private
practice in Minneapolis/St. Paul. She has twenty-five years' experience
teaching and writing about class and culture. Jensen teaches sociology
and psychology as an adjunct at Metropolitan State University. She is
currently writing The Silent Psychology, a book on the psychology and
sociology of class. Jensen is on the steering committee of the Minnesota
Center for Labor and Working Class Studies.
Sponsored by Stony Brook's Center for Study of Working Class Life
<http://www.workingclass.sunysb.edu>