Education and the American Dream: Historical Perspectives on Democracy and Education
E52.0552 and E55.0610
Kimmel, Room 803
Joan Malczewski
7 th
Floor Pless Hall jm186@nyu.edu
Office Hours: Monday 4:00 – 5:00, and by appointment
This course will examine the role of education in American society. Specifically, the course will consider different conceptions of democracy, community, and the relationship between public schooling and the promotion of democratic ideals. Students will explore some of the central goals and purposes of American public education over the past two centuries, and the historiographical debates about those goals and purposes. In the second half of the course, students will explore the relationship between schooling and civic education, and between schooling and specific communities. Students will be asked to consider whether the goals of schooling might promote or contradict the goals of particular groups who seek to benefit from public education, and how education does or does not promote democratic ideals.
COURSE MATERIALS
Required reading for this course consists of a set of articles that can be found on Blackboard and on the web, and the following texts, which are available at the NYU Bookstore:
Required
Robert Dahl: On Democracy
William Reese:
America’s Public Schools
David Labaree: How to succeed in school *without really learning
George Counts: Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order?
Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick: The American Dream and the Public
Schools
Richard Arum: Judging School Discipline: The Crisis of Moral Authority
Suggested :
Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America , available on-line, but you may want to own a copy, which is available in limited numbers at the NYU Bookstore. Ed.
Arthur Goldhammer, (Library of America, February, 2004).
Course Requirements:
1.
Attendance and informed participation in class discussions: Students will be expected to complete all of the reading and submit a set of three questions that critically explore the readings for the week. In that regard, these questions should not ask for a restatement or summary of text, nor should the questions request information that is readily available in the reading. Rather, the questions should attempt to make connections between texts, critique the author, or relate the readings to class themes. One way to think about it is to consider questions that might promote class discussion. The questions should be submitted via Blackboard by Tuesday evening each week. Students will receive 2 points for each set handed in on time, and will lost 1 point for each late assignment. Weekly
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** available on Blackboard
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questions are not due on the week of October 18, November 22, or December 13 but are due for 10 other weeks of the semester. (20% of grade)
2.
Reading the News: A democratic political society, according to Robert Dahl, requires that citizens have alternative sources of information.
1
Students should be regularly reading the news and should find three articles over the course of the semester that relates to the course. Your articles should be submitted throughout the semester and include a short statement, up to one page, about the relevance of each article to course readings and themes. (10%)
3.
Midterm Paper: Students will be asked to complete a take-home exam, which will be comprised of a set of short answer questions and some essays. For this exam, students will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of both the readings and class discussions. (30%) Due October 20
4.
Final Project: Students will be expected to explore one issue in depth that considers the relationship between education and democracy in contemporary culture. In this paper, students will be asked to provide historical context for the issue, describe the goals of particular constituencies, and develop their own response to the issue. Students will be expected to utilize the readings from the course, both primary and secondary. The essay should include a well-developed thesis statement, a set of arguments, and a clear conclusion. Each paper should explore the following questions: how the goals of public education might be the same or at odds with the goals of a particular community; how the readings illuminate what people believed about teaching and learning at a particular time in American history; an analysis of competing ideals; how different authors treated the same topic; and, your own analysis of the topic based on this information. (40% of grade) Proposal due November 22; Final Paper Due December 20
GRADING
You should note carefully the dates that written assignments are due – late assignments will be taken into account in assigning grades.
Any student attending NYU who needs an accommodation due to a chronic, psychological, visual, mobility and/or learning disability, or is deaf or hard of hearing should register with the
Moses Center for Students with Disabilities at 212 998-4980, 240 Greene Street, www.nyu.edu/csd .
COURSE SCHEDULE
I.
Community and Democracy – The Early Years
September 8: Introduction
September 13 - 15: What is Democracy
Robert Dahl: On Democracy
1 Robert Dahl, On Democracy , (New Haven, 1997), 97.
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September 20: Democracy and Conceptions of Community
Alexis de Toqueville: Democracy in America: Volume 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=0w8TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA70&dq=democracy
+in+america+volume+1 Chapters XII – XVI
Democracy in America: Volume 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=KO8tAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=d emocracy+in+america
Chapter XXVI and XXVII; Chapter XXXV
September 22: Democracy and Conceptions of Community
Benjamin Barber, “The Compromised Republic” **
Sheldon Wolin, “Democracy without the Citizen” **
John Rawls, “Political Liberalism” **
II.
Education as a “Fourth Branch of Government”
September 27: Primary Documents in the Development of a Public System of
Schooling
Massachusetts Old Deluder Satan Law of 1647 ** (James W. Fraser, ed., The
School in the United States: A Documentary History , McGraw Hill, 2001, p.
8)
Benjamin Rush: “Thought Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a
Republic”**(James W. Fraser,
The School in the United States: A
Documentary History , McGraw Hill, 2001, p. 27 - 31)
Thomas Jefferson: “Notes on the State of Virginia, 1743”** (James W. Fraser,
The School in the United States: A Documentary History , McGraw Hill, 2001, p. 24 - 27)
Horace Mann: “Tenth Annual Report” and “Twelfth Annual Report”**
(Lawrence A. Cremin, ed. The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the
Education of Free Men, Teachers College Press, 1957)
September 29 – What are Schools For? The Development of a Public System of
Schooling
William Reese: America’s Public Schools , Intro, Chapters 1 and 2
III.
Relationships Between Community and Schooling
October 4: The Transformation of Community in the Gilded Age
Jacob Riis – How the Other Half Lives , Selections
( http://www.yale.edu/amstud/inforev/riis/title.html
)
Read through as many chapters as possible to get a sense of the book, and specifically look at chapters 5, 6, 9, 10, 12- 16, 18, 20 - 22
Jane Addams: “Autobiographical Notes Upon Twenty Years at Hull House”
On Poverty: http://tigger.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/urbanexp/main.cgi?file=viewer.ptt
&mime=blank&doc=942&type=pdf "
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The Resources of the Immigrant: http://tigger.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/urbanexp/main.cgi?file=viewer.ptt
&mime=blank&doc=943&type=pdf
October 6: Expansion and evolution in public education
William Reese: America’s Public Schools , Chapters 3-4
Jospeh Mayer Rice: “The Public School System of the United States,”
The
Forum, Chapters 1, plus one other chapter http://books.google.com/books?id=_c8WAAAAIAAJ&dq=joseph+mayer+ rice++The+public+schools+system&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ot s=qL62IIa1A8&sig=zkCl3Vsowics7BUiNwkNq-
MIBHI&hl=en&ei=cWNnSvryIZDDlAf6xd3dDA&sa=X&oi=book_result
&ct=result&resnum=6
October 11: No class
October 13: The role of the public
John Dewey : The Public and its Problems, Chapters 4 and 5 **
Walter Lippman: The Phantom Public , Chapters I - VII, Chapter XIII, XVI **
Take-home exam to be distributed in class
October 18:
David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Public Schools** Chapters 2, 4, 5, 8
October 20: Women and Education
Take-home exam due back in class
IV.
Diversity, Communities, and Democracy in Education
October 25 and October 27: African Americans and Education – Post-bellum
Schooling and Beyond
W.E.B. Du Bois – The Souls of Black Folk and “The Talented Tenth”
The Souls of Black Folk: http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html
Chapters II –
IV, VI, IX
“The Talented Tenth” http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1148.htm
Booker T. Washington – Up From Slavery http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WASHINGTON/toc.html
Chapters II
– VIII, X, XIV
Adam Fairclough – “Liberation or Collaboration? Black Teachers in the Era of
White Supremacy” ** in
Teaching Equality
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November 1: Americanizing” the Schools and the Quest for Inclusion
Guest Speaker: Professor Jon Zimmerman
Jonathan Zimmerman: Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools** ,
Chapter 1 – 3
Leonard Covello: The Heart is the Teacher**, Read through as much of the book as possible, and look specifically at Chapters 4-9, 12,14,17,19-27
November 3: Schooling and Desegregation
Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick: The American Dream and the Public
Schools - Introduction, Chapter 1, 2
November 8: What Are New Schools For?
George Counts: Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order?
November 10: Local Communities versus Central Control
Jeffrey Moran: The Scopes Trial ** , selections- Part I
November 15: Local Communities versus Central Control
Jerald Podair: The Strike that Changed New York **– Introduction - Chapter 3
“Eyes on the Prize” – to be viewed in class
November 17: The Individual v. the Community: How should money be spent?
Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick: The American Dream and the Public
Schools - Introduction, Chapter 3 – 5
November 22: Democracy in the Schools: The Profession
Gerald Grant and Christine Murray: Teaching in America – the Slow
Revolution ,** chapter 6 - 8
Due: Proposal for final paper
November 24: No Class
V.
Democracy in the Schools
November 29: Democracy in the Schools: Student Discipline
Guest Speaker: Professor Richard Arum
Richard Arum : Judging School Discipline
December 1: Democracy in the Schools: Student Rights
Guest Speaker: Professor Robert Cohen
Free Speech Movement digital archives: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/FSM/
Robert Cohen, “This was their right, and they had to fight,” chapter from The
Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960’s, ed. Robert
Cohen and Reginald Zelnick
Student Press Law Report – Selections
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December 6 and 8: Education in Contemporary Civil Society
David Labaree, How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The
Credentials Race in American Education
December 13:
Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick: The American Dream and the Public
Schools - Chapter 6-8
December 15: Final Class – Summary and Discussion of Final Papers
December 20: Final Papers Due
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