EDUC 150 Schools: The Great Equalizer
Bigotry. Poverty. War. In 1848, Horace Mann wrote that if schooling were made public and compulsory, it would eventually eliminate those societal ills along with ignorance, intemperance, avarice, and others. Yet most of those conditions persist at varying levels of severity. Why? Is the curriculum boring and irrelevant? Are teachers incompetent? Are administrators out of touch? Is the system broken? Or is the social structure more impervious to change than these visionaries imagined? This course explores why American public schooling has not accomplished the lofty goals envisioned for it. Students will speak and write about their own experiences, read the great school debates and controversies, and observe contemporary classrooms where teachers are sincerely attempting to make a positive difference without using dunce caps or wooden paddles. Prerequisite: None