Race, Class, and Gender and the History of American Education

Hist. 6687

Summer 2005

 

Instructor: Dr. Stephanie Wright

Office: TLC 3208         Phone: 678-839-6035              email: swright@westga.edu

Office Hours: T, Th: 1:00-1:45 pm and 4:45-5:45 pm

Class Meetings: T, Th 2:00-4:45

 

Course Description: In the United States, the schoolhouse is often viewed as the gateway to prosperity and increased social standing.  While women, working class people, and people of color hoped to use education to improve their economic, social, and political standing, reformers often viewed it as a way in which to assimilate disparate groups into the larger American social structure.  This course explores the ways in which race, class, and gender have shaped the development of education in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  It also explores the efforts of immigrants, working class people, people of color and women to use education as a means of empowerment.

 

Course Objectives:

 

  1. To develop an ability to critique primary and secondary historical sources, identifying the perspective of the writer as well as the author’s thesis.
  2. To explore how the social construction of race and gender have shaped the development of education in the United States.
  3. To use historical sources to examine the current “culture wars” over the teaching of history in American educational institutions.
  4. To use primary and secondary sources to write a research paper.

 

Course Requirements:

 

Participation:                                                     25%

Response Papers                                              50%

Family Educational History Paper                      25%

 

Participation: This is not a lecture course.  During each class meeting, one of you will be responsible for leading class discussion on the assigned readings.  The success of this course and of you in it is completely dependent upon your completion of the assigned readings and readiness to discuss them.  Since it is impossible to participate if you are not present, any un-excused absences beyond two will result in a lower final grade.

 

Response Papers: Each student will write weekly response papers on the assigned readings.  The response papers should give a short overview of the reading(s) and focus on what you learned from or found lacking in the source.  You should also address how the reading extended your understanding of issues in American educational history.  Each response paper should be 2-3 pages, double-spaced.  ON WEEKS WHERE ONE OF THE READINGS IS AN ASSIGNED TEXT, THE RESPONSE PAPER SHOULD BE WRITTEN ON THE BOOK, NOT THE RESERVE ARTICLES.  You may use readings from past weeks to critique the current reading.

 

Educational Family History Paper: In an 8-10 page paper, examine one of the themes in this course using your own family educational history as a focus.  This paper will require you to interview members of your family, use existing written family documents (if possible), construct a family genealogy and conduct other primary and secondary research.  Examine the educational attainment of members of your family with a focus on some pattern in their history.  For instance, you could focus on how class, ethnicity, religion, race, gender, or some other factor that you deem significant, shaped the educational history of your family.

 

Academic Honesty: The work that you submit is expected to be your own.  When quoting words that are not your own, use quotation marks and note the source.  When paraphrasing, be sure to provide proper credit to the author through the use of footnotes.         Evidence of plagiarism on papers and/or cheating on exams will result in a failing grade for the course.

 

Assigned Texts:

 

David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995).

 

James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1988).

 

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988).

 

Lawrence Levine, The Opening of the American Mind (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997).

 

David Tyack and Elizabeth Hansot, Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Public Schools (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992).

 

All reserve readings are available on electronic reserve at Ingram Library.  The password for our class is dawn.

                                                                                            

Class Schedule

 

June 7              Introduction to course

 

June 9              Early issues in American education

                        Reserve reading: Excerpts from David Tyack, ed. Turning Points in                                     American Educational History.              

 

June 14            Immigrant Education and the Complexities of Class in America

                        Reserve reading: David Galenson, “Ethnic Differences in Neighborhood                                 Effects on the School Attendance of Boys in Early Chicago.” History of

                        Education Quarterly, v. 38, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 17-35.

 

                        Gary Gertsle, “Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans,” J. of

                        American History, vol. 84, no. 2 (Spring 1997): 524-558.

 

June 16            Immigrant Education and the Complexities of Class in America

                        Reserve Reading: Glenna Colcough and E.M. Beck, “The American                          Educational Structure and the Reproduction of Social Class,” Sociological

                        Inquiry, v. 36 (1986): 456-76.

 

                        Jane Nidiffer, “Poor Historiography: The Poorest in American Higher

                        Education,” History of Education Quarterly, v. 39, no. 3 (Autumn 1999):

                        321-336.

                        1st RESPONSE PAPER DUE

 

June 21            Post Civil War Black Education

                        Reserve Reading: Excerpts from Booker T. Washington’s Up From

                        Slavery and W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk

                       

                        Excerpt from Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow

 

June 23            Post Civil War Black Education

                        James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South.

                        2nd RESPONSE PAPER DUE

 

June 28            Gender and the Public School  

                        Tyack and Hansot, Learning Together

 

June 30            Women and Higher Education

                        Reserve Reading: Amy Thompson McCandless, The Past in the Present:

                        Women’s Higher Education in the Twentieth Century American South,

                        Chs. 1-3

                        3rd RESPONSE PAPER DUE

 

July 5               Schooling American Indians

                        David Adams, Education for Extinction

 

July 7               Education as a means of Americanization: The Case of Asian Americans

                        Reserve Reading: Sieglinde Lim de Sanchez, “Crafting a Delta Chinese

                        Community,” History Education Quarterly, v. 43, no. 1 (Spring 2003)

 

                        Noriko Asato, “Mandating Americanization: Japanese Language Schools

                        and the Federal Survey of Education in Hawaii, 1916-1920,” History

                        Education Quarterly, v. 43, no. 1 (Spring 2003).

                        4th RESPONSE PAPER DUE

                       

July 12             School Desegregation

                        Reserve Reading: Melvin Urofsky, “Among the Most Humane Moments

                        in All Our History: Brown v. Board of Education in Historical

                        Perspective,” in Urofsky and Cushman, eds. Black, White and Brown: The

                        Landmark School Desegregation Case in Retrospect.

 

                        David Levy, “Before Brown: The Racial Integration of American Higher

                        Education,” in Urofsky and Cushman, Black, White and Brown

 

A.     Reynaldo Contreras and Leonard Valverde, “The Impact of Brown on

the Education of Latinos,” Journal of Negro Education, v. 63, no. 3 (1994): 470-481.

                       

July 14             Post Brown America

                        Film: “Silver Rights”

                        5th RESPONSE PAPER DUE

 

July 19             The History Culture Wars

                        Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind                   

 

July 21             The History Culture Wars

                        Lawrence Levine, The Opening of the American Mind

                        6th RESPONSE PAPER DUE

 

July 26             Paper Presentations

                        Papers Due