{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.04132231404958678, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0023612750885478157, 'mean_word_length': 4.96830985915493, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Unions, and Race in the Battle for School Equity

the socio-economic phenomenon it has become. As Perlin explains, ‘‘An overwhelming majority of colleges and universities, as well as some high schools, endorse and promote unpaid internships without a second thought, provide the lucrative academic credit that employers wishfully hope will indemnify their firms, and justify it all with high-minded rhetoric about ‘situated learning’ and ‘experiential education’‘‘ (p. 83). Or, more simply, to quote Stephen Colbert, ‘‘This country was built by unpaid interns. And in exchange, I assume they got college credit’’ (ibid.). Perlin’s first chapter on how Disney uses interns to cut labor costs at its amusement parks, working young people 12 hours a day, is a set piece in itself. More seriously, he analyzes the legal background to interning, showing that labor law explicitly forbids unpaid work of the kind that one to two million college students do every day in the United States. His chapter ‘‘The Economics of Internships’’ is especially valuable, as it brings in Gary Becker’s ‘‘human capital theory,’’ and how that was neatly used by Reagan and his followers to justify unpaid labor. By interviewing scores of interns in a dozen cities, along with sociologists (e.g., Mark Granovetter), economists, and labor lawyers, Perlin has exposed this Dickensian practice for what it is, and deserves our thanks for doing it well. He has apparently struck a nerve, since he and his book have been attacked online by those who profit from setting up internships, and probably wish he was still translating Chinese documents in London, which was his first unpaid internship.