A Quote by Debra Dean

Before I got my present job, I spent many years teaching writing part-time, so-called, at community colleges and universities. It's academia's version of migrant labor.
We have seen the civil rights movement insist on re-writing many of the textbooks in our universities and schools. The labor unions likewise insist that textbooks be fair to the viewpoints of organized labor. Other interested citizens groups have not hesitated to review, analyze and criticize textbooks and teaching materials.
I was born in Evanston, Illinois. I spent my elementary and part of my junior high school years in a D.C. suburb. And then I spent my high school years in Minnesota. And then I spent my college years in Colorado. And then I spent some time living in China. And then I spent three years in Vermont before moving down to Nashville.
I've worked throughout California as a poet: in colleges, universities, worker camps, migrant education offices, continuation high schools, juvenile halls, prisons, and gifted classrooms.
College athletes are workers, period. They are skilled and disciplined young people who deserve so much more than to be treated, in many cases, as sources of revenue without autonomy or ownership over their labor and value by the colleges and universities they attend.
Critics of American colleges typically attribute the failings of undergraduate education to a tendency on the part of professors to neglect their teaching to concentrate on research. In fact, the evidence does not support this thesis, except perhaps in major research universities.
In my college years, I worked as a union labor organizer. I was just one of the many workers trying to do my part to help the community.
We have to make sure that college is accessible and affordable. Two years ago, I stood here and called upon our institutions of higher learning to develop plans for degrees that cost no more than $10,000. There were plenty of detractors at that time who insisted it couldn't be done. However, that call inspired educators at colleges and universities across our state to step up to the plate. Today, I'm proud to tell you that thirteen Texas universities have announced plans for a $10,000 degree.
Too many years away from academia renders you pretty incompetent at research and teaching. So I had to go back.
That's kind of the nature of the profession I'm in. It's frustrating. Things don't go your way, and I was no exception, in that I spent many years struggling to get work, and there are a lot of people more talented than myself who got jobs before me. And I finally, after years and years and years, got lucky.
Education was a big focus for me, before the show and during the show. I applied to four or five colleges and universities and got into three and was planning on going.
In the past, there has been a stigma surrounding community colleges, where they were seen as a less viable option because they are not four-year universities. I know differently and so do the millions of people across the country who have received an affordable, quality higher education at community college.
The community itself didn't support the union. Now that's kind of interesting about [Barack] Obama, because Obama was supposedly a community organizer in Chicago at that time. Now I'm sure he read the Chicago Tribune, so he knew about it, but when he went to show his solidarity with the workforce, the first place he went was Caterpillar. I don't think he's forgotten, and the labor movement didn't react. Even radical labor historians didn't remember. It was only 15 years ago, after all, but that's a real triumph of propaganda in many ways.
I liked teaching, but the bureaucracy of academia and the petty intrigue... It wasn't a good fit. Once I admitted that myself, that I didn't like academia, I was ready to try TV.
I want to spend my time at colleges and universities.
Essentially what my campaign is about, it`s about anything, this is saying we`ve got bring that money back into the middle class and working families. We have to create jobs, we have to raise, we have to make public colleges and universities tuition free so kids in that community who are studying hard understand that some day they will be able to go to college.
It's always extremely interesting to speak at colleges. My books are taught in many colleges in America and are part of the educational system, so it's really important to me. I don't believe in so many things in life, but something I believe in is education.
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