Course Schedule

Topic: Introduction to Course: Welcome! 

During this session we will go over the course syllabus, updated Lehman College COVID protocols, and get to know one another.

Before the next class session, please be sure to respond to the two Google surveys I will send out through Blackboard. I will also embed the link on our CUNY Commons site in this section. One survey is regarding your preferred name and pronouns. The second survey is soliciting your thoughts and interests in course topics. In other words, select a topic that you would like to learn about this semester. This can be a topic you’d like to explore further, something you’d like to better understand, or just something you’d like to contribute. Our syllabus will be modified to incorporate and reflect your contributions.

 Guiding questions for the class session: 

• What is education? What is formal schooling? What is the difference between them? Similarities? How do you know?
• Should we compare learning in different parts of the world? Compare to what? To whom? What are the benefits? Drawbacks?

Assignment: 

• Submit two Google surveys by 9/7.
  • This submission will be a + 1 on your final grade.
  • Links to Google Surveys
    • Google Survey 1: Preferred Names & Pronouns 
    • Google Survey 2: Topics You’d Like to See In Our Course 

Topic: Learning in the Era of COVID

This class session will be heavily discussion based. Think about how COVID has shaped K-12 education as well as higher education. Did COVID permanently change the landscape of education? Were those changes temporary? What does this mean for existing educational inequality? The future?

Before our discussion, please read:

• https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/infographic-covid19-coronavirus-impact-global-education-health-schools/
• https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2020/04/13/coronavirus-and-challenging-times-for-education-in-developing-countries/
•  https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1062232

Readings:

• The Talented 10^th, W.E.B DuBois (stop reading on pg 50 of the document) 
• Karl Marx & The Communist Manifesto (ONLY READ pgs. 14-22)
• Education in a New Society excerpt (social and cultural reproduction theory & status attainment) (BB)

Assignment:

• Discussion board prompt response 1 due 9/22 by 11:59pm

Readings:

• Paulo Freire: Ch. 2 from Pedagogy of the Oppressed (pp. 71-86) (ONLY READ CH. 2)
• Against the Dark: Anti-blackness in Education Policy and Discourse, Michael Dumas 
• The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing & Counter Framing, Joe Feagin

Assignment Due:

• Discussion board prompt response 2 due 10/6 by 11:59pm

Readings:

• What is Settler Colonialism? Teaching for Justice 
• Paternalism, Colonialism and Indigenous Education, Zuleyka Zevallos
• Brief History of Residential Schools in Canada
• Canada: Indigenous Community Finds Potential 93 Unmarked Graves 
• Colonial Education in South Africa 

Assignment Due:

• Discussion board prompt response 3 due 10/12 by 11:59pm

In Class Film: Rabbit Proof Fences

Assignment:

• Discussion board prompt response 4 due 10/20 by 11:59pm

Readings:

• Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities, Eve Tuck
• On Violence from Wretched of the Earth (pp.1-30), Frantz Fanon
• Decolonizing the Classroom: Lessons in Multicultural Education, Wayne Au
• Solidarity Necessitates Reciprocity: Confronting Settler Colonialism in Antiracist Education

 Assignment Due:

• Discussion board prompt response 5 due 10/26 by 11:59pm
• Roundtable Discussion 1 & 2

10/28/2022

In-Class Film: Luce

To fully work through the film Luce, please make sure that you have read the excerpt from Fanon’s Wretch of the Earth assigned for last class.

Assignment Due:

•  Discussion board prompt response 6 due 11/3

11/4/2022

 Readings:

• Social Class and School Knowledge, Jean Anyon
• Finding or losing yourself? working-class relationships to education, Diane Reay
• Class Wreckage and Class Repositioning: Narratives of Japanese Educated Taiwanese by Lin

Assignment Due:

• Discussion board prompt response 7 due 11/9 by 11:59pm
• Roundtable Discussion 3 & 4

·

Readings:

• Philanthrocapitalism: Race, Political Spectacle, and the Marketplace of Beneficence in a NYC School, Amy Brown (BB) 
• How School Choice Turns Education into a Commodity, Turner (The Atlantic)
• Disaster Capitalism and Vulture Charters, Lauren Lefty (Jacobin Magazine)
• Does England’s Rapid Expansion of Charter-like Academies Hold Lessons for the U.S.? Chalkbeat

 Assignment Due:

• Discussion board prompt response 8 due 11/17 by 11:59pm
• Roundtable Discussion 5 & 6

• The Age of Patriarchy: How An Unfashionable Idea Became A Rallying Cry for Feminism Today, The Guardian
• Barriers to Girls’ Education, Strategies and Interventions, Unicef
• America Is Still a Patriarchy, Philip Cohen (The Atlantic)

In Class Film: Girl Rising 

Assignment:

• Discussion board prompt response 9 due by 12/1 by 11:59pm

12/2/2022

Readings:

•  The “New Racism” of K–12 Schools: Centering Critical Research on Racism, Kohli, Pizarro, & Nevárez
• Almost All Black British Children Have Experienced Racism at School, WEF
• Schools and the No-Prison Phenomenon: Anti- Blackness and Secondary Policing in the Black Lives Matter Era, Lynette Parker
• Racialized classroom practices in a diverse Amsterdam primary school: the silencing, disparagement, and discipline of students of color, Weiner (BB) 
• Making Americans: Schooling, Diversity, and Assimilation in the Twenty-First Century, Christina Lash (BB) 

Assignment Due:

• Discussion board prompt response 10 due 12/8 by 11:59pm
• Roundtable Discussion 7 & 8

12/9/2022

Readings:

• Why Is the U.K Curriculum So Whitewashed 
• The Whitewashing of Empire and History in British Schools
• Whitewashing the Past, Rethinking Schools 
• Efforts to Ban Critical Race Theory Could Restrict Teaching for a Third of America’s Kids, Ed Week
• More Republican Leaders Try to Ban Books on Race & LGBTQ Issues, NPR 

Assignment Due:

Curriculum Investigation Project Due 12/8: In groups you will be provided with a sample text or curriculum used in schools. You will discuss what that text or curriculum teaches students (both explicitly and implicitly), what it leaves out, and what it distorts/revises. To anchor this conversation in class, we will draw from the works of Ibram X. Kendi (Stamped from the Beginning) & Howard Zinn (A People’s History). Moving the conversation further along, we will consider the implications of curriculum on knowing/knowledge. For instance, what impact has your curriculum had on you? How would you change the curriculum? Additional guidelines will be posted on Blackboard and discussed in class.