FFC Requirement(s)
Humanities (HU), Domestic Pluralism (DP)
Course Description
(History of Education in the US) Two hundred years ago, the vast majority of men and women in the United States only attended a formal school for a few years at most. Many of the functions we associate with schooling - the transmission of knowledge, socialization, and job preparation - took place in the home, community, or workplace. The story of the 19th and 20th century is the story of the expansion of education into a central experience in the lives of Americans, delivered in a vast network of educational institutions. By moving thematically through the roles of both K-12 and higher education, this course will examine the processes through which a wide array of social functions moved into the school system, and the modern U.S. educational system was forged. A central course theme will be how established forms of social inequality and exclusion were incorporated into and then reproduced by an expanding system of education. No prerequisites.