Course Description
History of education is sometimes perceived as a history of schooling. While that might be one perspective, to consider education only in the context of schooling limits our understanding of the complex web of relationships that comprise our varied educative experiences. Ellen Condliffe Lagemann sees education as a "process of interaction by which individual potential (instincts, propensities, talents) is activated, shaped, or channeled and a change (an observable or consciously felt difference) thereby produced in the self."

This course examines the nature of education, broadly defined, from an historical perspective that includes the interplay of political, social, economical, and human issues upon groups of individuals. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which minority groups within U.S. society have been affected by the major educational "movements." We will thus explore historical themes and movements of the colonial era, the common school movement, progressivism, and desegregation.

Required Readings (available at the Illini Union Bookstore)
David Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995).

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

Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, A Generation of Women: Education in the Lives of Progressive Reformers, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).

Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

Course Packet available at Notes-N-Quotes on 502 East John Street (Johnstowne Centre).

OPTIONAL: Joel Spring, The American School: 1642-1996, Fourth Edition (The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.: 1997).

Reading Schedule
 
 

8/30	COURSE INTRODUCTION
9/6	NO CLASS -- LABOR DAY
9/13	Ellen Lagemann, "Contested Terrain: A History of Education Research in the United States, 1890-1990" and David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform, pp. 12-39 [Course Packet]
9/20	S. Alexander Rippa, Education in a Free Society: An American History, pp. 1-110 (Part I) [Course Packet]
9/27	David Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928, pp. IX-163 Video: In the White Man's Image (History of the American Indian boarding school experience and Richard Henry Pratt and the Carlisle Institute)
10/4	Adams, pp. 164-337
10/11	NO CLASS [Historical Analysis of Education Essay Due in my faculty mailbox]
10/18	James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, whole book Guest Speaker:  Dr. James Anderson, Professor in Educational Policy Studies
10/25	Lynn Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era, pp. 1-51 [Course Packet] Video: Sentimental Women Need Not Apply (History of Nursing in the United States)
11/1	Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, A Generation of Women: Education in the Lives of Progressive Reformers, pp. 1-86
11/8	Lagemann, pp. 89-180
11/15	George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945, pp. 3-14, 85-125 (Part Two) [Course Packet] [Oral History Due] Video: Uneasy Neighbors (Mexican workers in Southern California)
11/22	Eileen Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii, pp. 1-5, 43-161 [Course Packet]
11/29	Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South, pp. 1-117 Video excerpt from: Listening to Children (Psychiatrist Robert Coles's journey into the moral lives of children and the influence of Ruby Bridges in the era of desegregation)
12/6	Walker, pp. 119-226
12/13	[Final Assignment Due]