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Education and the Formation of the State
Plato (427BCE-347BCE)
 Disgusted with the state of
politics and rulers
 Wrote Republic to discuss
what a true state should be
 Taught by Socrates; followed
by Aristotle
 Dialogues are examples of
the Socratic method
 For Plato, private morality
and politics were intertwined
 The Matrix and the Cave
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Revolutionary Era Ideology
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Faith in reason (growth of science)
Natural law (deism)
Progress
Nationalism/patriotism
Natural aristocracy v. artificial aristocracy
 Jefferson’s plan for public education
National Education Association
Core Values
 Equal Opportunity: We believe public education is the
gateway to opportunity. All students have the human
and civil right to a quality public education that develops
their potential, independence, and character.
 A Just Society: We believe public education is vital to
building respect for the worth, dignity, and equality of
every individual in our diverse society.
 Democracy: We believe public education is the
cornerstone of our republic. Public education provides
individuals with the skills to be involved, informed, and
engaged in our representative democracy.
American Federation of Teachers
Mission Statement
The mission of the AFT is to improve the lives of
our members and their families, to give voice to
their legitimate professional, economic and
social aspirations, to strengthen the institutions
in which we work, to improve the quality of the
services we provide, to bring together all
members to assist and support one another and
to promote democracy, human rights and
freedom in our union, in our nation, and
throughout the world.
Questions for Discussion
 Can moral teaching exist without religious
teaching?
 Should leaders be educated differently than
others?
 What if someone only THINKS he/she is
enlightened? How do you know the difference?
 Can you be enlightened and not be good?
 What do you think about the pace of
enlightenment? Can it be too slow or fast?
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Morals, Indoctrination and Education
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Progressive Era (@1890-1930)
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Urbanization
Industrialization
Immigration
Ideology (faith in experts; rise of psychology)
Education
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Progressive Education
 Two wings of it: Developmental Democracy and
Social Efficiency
 Common critique of schools (learn by doing;
school as reflective of society; school should
help solve society’s problems)
 New educational objectives (social stability,
employable skills, equal educational opportunity)
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George Counts (1889-1974)
 Influenced by John Dewey
 Accused of being a communist
 Critical of Progressive Education (said it was
elitist and without direction)
 Envisioned a ‘political’ role for teachers--they
should lead rather than follow society
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Toni Morrison (1931-)
 Nobel Prize-winning
author, editor, and
professor
 Morrison and Counts are
linked because they
agree that it is the
responsibility of the
school and the teacher to
teach morals and to
acknowledge that
morals/values are present
at all times
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Missions in Action
 University of Washington Mission Statement
 Vales and Traits, Washington State Legislature
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Questions for Discussion
 Can you think of a situation where you struggled with
your values while teaching? How did you handle it?
 Should schools and teachers play a role in the creation
of a new social order?
 What do you make of Counts’ definition of democracy (p.
41)? How do you think it would resonate in today’s
schools?
 What do you make of Counts’ discussion of
indoctrination and Morrison’s admonition that ‘we teach
morals by having them’? Would your answer change
depending on the age of the students, the method of
delivery, or other factors?
“What’s Wrong with Being Colorblind?”
Liberalism and Racism
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Questions for Discussion
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Identify some of Paley’s dilemmas;
would you have dealt with them the
same way? Why or why not?
Are there situations where ‘doing race’
(or gender or religion, for that matter) is
appropriate or inappropriate?
How does the Paley reading fit with
some of the other readings you’ve
done?
(**for next time, think of ONE book you
believe all high school students should
read before graduation**)
“I Saw it in Forrest Gump”:
Textbooks, Popular Culture, and Truth
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Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
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Prof of humanities at CUNY
Pulitzer Prize winner for
books on the presidency
Special assistant and
speech writer for Kennedy
Considered a ‘lion of
liberalism’
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What is Multicultural Education?
Multicultural education is designed to help unify a deeply divided nation rather
than to divide a highly cohesive one. Multicultural education supports the
notion of e pluribus unum... The multiculturalists and the Western
traditionalists, however, often differ about how the unum can best be achieved.
Traditionally, the larger U.S. society as well as the schools have tried to create
the unum by assimilating students from diverse racial and ethnic groups into a
mythical Anglo American culture that required them to experience a process
of self-alienation and harsh assimilation. However, even when students of
color became culturally assimilated, they were often structurally excluded
from mainstream institutions. Multicultural educators view e pluribus unum
as the appropriate national goal but believe that the unum must be negotiated,
discussed, and restructured to reflect the nation’s ethnic and cultural diversity.
The reformulation of the unum must be a process and must involve the
participation by diverse groups within the nation, such as people of color,
women, straights, gays, the powerful, the powerless, the young, and the old.
The reformulation of the unum must also involve power sharing and
participation by people from many different cultural communities
(Banks, 1999, p. 8).
Wholeness v. Oneness
Wholeness, not oneness, is the master term in the history of the
production of democratic peoples. Indeed, the effort to make
the people ‘one’ should be seen as but a single version of the
more general endeavor, necessitated by the more fundamental
democratic project, to make people ‘whole.’ The word derives
from Old English and Germanic forms meaning ‘uninjured,
sound, healthy, and complete.’ Now it means rather ‘full,’ ‘total,’
‘complete,’ and ‘all.’ Neither the Oxford English Dictionary nor
Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary treats ‘one’ as its
synonym. The reason for this is simple. A speaker cannot use
the word ‘one’ to mean multiplicity, but the word ‘whole’ entails
just that. The effort to make the people ‘one’ cultivates in the
citizenry a desire for homogeneity, for that is the aspiration
taught to citizens by the meaning of the word ‘one,’ itself. In
contrast, an effort to make people ‘whole’ might cultivate
aspiration to the coherence and integrity of a consolidated but
complex, intricate, and differentiated body.” (Danielle Allen,
Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v.
Board of Education, 17.)
Questions for Discussion
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What are the morals portrayed in the
textbooks?
Had you critiqued your textbooks in high
school? College?
Education as a Radical
Venture: In Theory
Paulo Freire (1921-1997)
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Worked with rural
poor adults
Professor,
government
employee, and
community worker
Wanted to extend
literacy and
democracy
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bell hooks
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Writings focus on the
intersection of race, class,
and gender and the role they
play in oppression and
marginalization
Books include Ain’t I a
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Feminism; Talking Back:
Thinking Feminist, Thinking
Black; Killing Rage: Ending
Racism
Questions for Discussion
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Does liberation demand action or not?
Are liberation and self-actualization the same?
Different? Sequential?
Is “banking education” inherently bad and “problemposing education” always good?
How might you critique Freire (most folks merely
celebrate each and every word)?
What does the type of education proposed by Freire
and hooks mean for teachers, society, conceptions of
citizenship, and morals?
Are the categories of oppressor and oppressed
fixed? (also think about the concept of “false
generosity”)
Education as a Radical
Venture: In Practice
Highlander Folk School,
Myles Horton
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Founded as adult
education center;
aim was to build a
progressive labor
movement
Changed focus in
1953 to Civil Rights
Movement and
voting rights
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Brief Mississippi History
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Black statistics
White reaction to
Brown decision
(SNCC and sit-ins)
Summer 1964:
Freedom Summer
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Questions for Discussion
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Is working inside the system or outside the system better? What
does either mean for the possibilities of education for liberation?
What about the time constraints on ‘freedom?’ Do we have the
luxury of time to allow ‘the people’ to come to their own
conclusions?
What do you make of citizenship schools excluding credentialed
teachers and whites because organizers thought they would
discourage the adult students from expressing themselves?
Where have we seen a SNCC-type educational purpose/mission
on a school-wide scale?
What do you make of the SNCC primary materials?
How do you make sense of these readings in light of previous
readings ranging from Plato to Freire?
Language Issues:
Does an American Have to
Speak
English?
Ingles
Englisch
英語
Inglese
‫إنجليزي‬
Meyer v. Nebraska, 1923
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Question: can a state prohibit teaching
in a language other than English?
Decision: No, although court recognizes
the impetus for it
“The state may do much, go very far,
indeed, in order to improve the quality of
its citizens, physically, mentally and
morally, is clear; but the individual has
certain fundamental rights which must
be respected.”
Lau v. Nichols, 1974
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Question: Is equal or equitable treatment required by
schools?
Decision: equitable treatment (though critical mass
necessary)
“Under these state-imposed standards there is no
equality of treatment merely by providing students
with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and
curriculum; for students who do not understand
English are effectively foreclosed from any
meaningful education.”
Language, Race/Ethnicity,
American Identity, and
Citizenship
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No Official Tongue
Germans and bilingual schools (1875)
Spanish language rights (1880/1881)
Tape v. Hurley (1885)
Barbarous Dialects (1887)
Teddy Roosevelt speech (1917)
Alvarez v. Lemon Grove (1931)/Mendez
v. Westminster (1946)
“Recent” Developments
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English Only Movement/US English,
1983
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Proposes immersion, reduces support for
bilingual education
Proposition 227 (CA), 1998
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Restricts length of time students can spend
in bilingual education
Questions for Discussion
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Reflect on the purposes of education as
we’ve discussed them; how does
bilingual education fit?
How does bilingual education fit with our
discussion of integration/assimilation/
acculturation/separation/segregation?
How do we reconcile “Americanness”
with diversity? How about the
relationship between language and
citizenship?
How Do We Define “Social
Justice” in Education?
14th Amendment (1868)
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…No State shall make or enforce any
law which shall abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United
States; nor shall any State deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law; nor deny to
any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws.
Cases that make up Brown
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Briggs v. Elliott (SC), 1950
Belton v. Gebhart; Bulah v. Gebhart
(DE), 1951
Brown v. Board of Education (KS), 1951
Davis v. County School Board of Prince
Edward County (VA), 1951
Bowling v. Sharpe (DC), 1952
Excerpts from Brown v. Board
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Today, education is perhaps the most important
function of state and local governments…It is the
foundation of good citizenship…Such an opportunity,
where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a
right which must be made available to all on equal
terms…Does segregation of children in public
schools solely on the basis of race, even though the
physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be
equal, deprive the children of the minority group of
equal educational opportunities? We believe that it
does.
Pivotal Cases
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Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)
 Colleges can use race as a plus factor in
determining whether a student should be
admitted; while race may not be the only factor,
the decision allows admissions committees to take
race into consideration along with other
individualizing factors; says race-conscious
policies must be limited in time
Gratz v. Bollinger (2003)
 Undergraduate system was ruled unconstitutional
because it was a rigid point-based admissions
policy which was considered too much like a quota
system
Parents Involved v. Seattle
School District (5-4 decision)
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Cannot use race as a tie-breaker
Use of race is ONLY for racial balance,
nothing more
Seattle schools were never legally
segregated or under a court order to
desegregate
The Brown decision prohibits states
from according differential treatment
based on race
Justice Anthony Kennedy
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Concurred but believed decision too
dismissive of the goals of avoiding racial
isolation due to de facto segregation
Mistaken in saying the constitution
required state/local authorities to accept
status quo
Lists possible solutions: strategic site
selection, directing resources to special
programs
Justice Stephen Breyer
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Dissents and argues that local
communities would be stripped of tools
necessary to prevent re-segregation
Their claim to Brown is a cruel irony
The difference between de facto and de
jure segregation is meaningless
Personal Reflection
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To what extent did your K-12 experience give you the
opportunity to learn and interact with classmates that were
of a different race, nationality, or ethnicity? To what extent
has this impacted your adult life?
In your teaching and learning experiences, how does
interracial, intercultural, and/or interethnic education look?
What would you say the level of interaction is amongst
differently identified groups? To what extent is the
teacher’s role to assure interracial/intercultural/interethnic
interaction?
Questions to Discuss re:
Amicus Briefs
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What are the goals of American education (find
quotes)? Whose interests do these goals serve? Can
you see how the goals set forth would be in tension
with other goals?
How is the Brown decision discussed?
What are the arguments used to support the brief’s
stance on the pupil assignment plan? Are there
alternatives offered that would prevent resegregation, and how does the brief argue against
other alternatives?
How do you make sense of the decision and your
brief in terms of “Education as a Moral Endeavor?”