Law Commons^™

Learning To Work: A Functional Approach To Welfare And Higher Education, Martha Davis

Martha F. Davis

The current welfare law mandates participation in designated work activities at the expense of education for welfare recipients, particularly discouraging pursuit of higher education while, at the same time, emphasizing marriage. On the eve of the 2010 reauthorization of welfare reform, this article challenges the assumption underlying the 1996 welfare law and its 2005 reauthorization that work and education are wholly distinct concepts and activities. Indeed, both educational theory and workforce development policies have reflected this conceptual and functional common ground between work and education for decades. Similarly, peer nations and international law squarely acknowledge the ways in which these …