Curriculum and
Policy Studies in Urban Education
This
material is posted for discussion only.
It has not yet been approved by the Committee.
Core Course 2
The Historical Context
of Urban Education:
Race, Class, Gender,
Ethnicity and Religion
(3 Credits)
Tentative Course Outline*
I. The origins of public schooling in Urban America (the
anti-bellum period)
- origins of schooling in America
- the emergence of mass education in the early 19th c.
- public responsibility for the education of children
- the changing nature of religious and moral instruction in
public education
- the changing nature of secular instruction in public
education
II. Institutionalizing Education (post-bellum era)
- urbanization, industrialization and class formation
- the place of race
- immigration
- gender and education
- creating a teaching force
- models of teaching and learning
- political control of urban education
III. The Progressive Era
- progressivism as a philosophical/political movement in
government, race relations and education
- the impact of ideological and political movements on
urban education (e.g., suffrage , labor, and good
government movements, radical political philosophies of
the left and right)
- urban reform and educational reform
- arriving at "the one best system": bureaucratic
organization of public education
- ideology, curriculum and textbooks
- models of teaching and learning
- immigration and Americanization
IV. Urban Education in Hard Times (The Great Depression)
- the economics of schooling
- schooling and the replication/transformation of social
class
- ideology, curriculum and textbooks
- models of teaching and learning
- relationship of schools to social and economic changes
- changing urban demographics
V. Education in the Post-World War II era
- urban schools responses to race, ethnicity and
language, and children with special needs
- educational policy-making as crisis management: Sputnik,
declining literacy rates, dropouts, and declining
standards
- gender and schooling
- models of teaching and learning
- ideology, curriculum and textbooks
- public/private space in the field of education:
rethinking public responsibility for the education of
children
- recruiting, training, and retaining teachers and
administrators
- changing technologies of education
- the end of "the one best system" and the rise
of alternative models of urban schooling
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* Issues of historiography will be infused throughout the
course. Each topic will explore issues of race, class, gender,
ethnicity and religion, and how these variables have interact
with each other.
The course also will examine how each era answers the
questions and problems it confronts. These questions and their
proposed solutions will be compared across historic periods.