Nose to the Grindstone: A History of American Work Ethic

BackStory

Education, History

4.5 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2016

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Labor Day holiday offers some of us a much-needed break from work, but most Americans don’t get much vacation time. In this episode, the Guys look at American attitudes towards the value, meaning, and importance of work. We examine the meaning of the Puritan work ethic, and how race and class are often more important than hard work in determining achievement. We also ask why a strong work ethic has long been a key part of what it means to be American.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is backstory. I'm Ed Ayers. What do you think is the biggest problem facing our country right now?
0:05.1	Is it people not working hard? If you're willing to learn a truly useful skill and really no kidding work your butt off
0:12.7	You're still okay. You're a desperate for those people. That's reality TV hosts Mike Rowe on Fox and friends
0:19.0	Repeating a common theme on his show dirty jobs. You just need to work hard to get ahead
0:26.0	Maybe that's why Americans work longer hours take fewer vacation days and retire later than people in most other
0:33.4	industrialized countries, but Americans have it always embraced hard work
0:37.4	The first settlers in the Jamestown colony for instance had better things to do people sat around they played cards
0:44.4	They didn't actually want to work. They came hoping to make quick riches and so to honor Labor Day
0:51.6	We're looking at a history of the American work ethic
0:54.8	Coming up today on backstory
1:00.4	Major funding for backstory is provided by the Shia Khan Foundation the National Endowment for the Humanities the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation and the Arthur Vining Davis foundations
1:13.2	From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities this is backstory
1:19.2	With the American History Guys
1:21.8	Welcome to the show I'm Brian bellow and I'm here with Eddie or a Brian and Peter onus with us either Brian
1:30.7	We're gonna start off the show today by taking you to shop class at Central High
1:36.6	Location suburban anywhere USA
1:42.4	This is clean cut Don
1:45.4	At this is his rump old Mopey friend Nick
1:49.9	Nick and Don are teenage characters from a 1950s short educational film called the benefits of looking ahead
1:58.4	This film follows Nick our protagonist through his inability to focus on what's important in life or the future
2:06.8	Kelly Whitter is a professor at the University of Illinois
2:10.4	Don repeatedly asks Nick to think about the future to look ahead to succeed in something you have to have a purpose and make plans for reaching it and work at it all the time and
	...

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