EDUC247: HISTORY OF EDUCATION
Professor Katina Manko Writing
Assignment Click Here
Mailbox: 130 Willard Hall Phone:
831-1643 (messages only) Cookson
reading guide click here
Office Hours: M/W 10:30-11:00 or by
appointment in Room 116 Willard Hall
E-mail: kmanko@udel.edu (preferred)
Course Home page:
http://www.udel.edu/History/manko/educ247
Class Meeting Time: Monday &
Wednesday 9:00-10:30 A.M. in 116
Willard Hall
This course will explore the history of formal schooling in American history. The course will be structured around two sets of questions. The first set is concerned with interpreting the information available about the past and present state of American education:
1. What are the purposes of American education?
2. What is the relationship between American education and American culture?
3. Who controls American education?
4. What is the nature of the ideology surrounding American education and how does it influence the purposes of education, the curriculum, and the roles of the teacher and the student?
The second set of questions will require students to examine their own beliefs in light of the information presented in the course:
1. What should the purposes of American education be?
2. What role(s) should the schools take with respect to American culture(s)?
3. Who should control American education?
4. What role should the teacher play in American society and in his/her own school?
In the most general terms, the aim of EDUC247 is to enable prospective teachers to understand that teaching is an activity that takes place in an extraordinarily complex context. Teaching has historical dimensions; it builds on intellectual traditions. Teaching has social dimensions; it is shaped by social forces and in turn has social consequences that extend well beyond the walls of the classroom. Teaching also has moral dimensions; it involves the responsible treatment of students, colleagues, parents and other community members. Finally, teaching has political dimensions; it is influenced by the decisions of political authorities and shapes the quality of political life in a society.
This course on the history of American education is designed to help you become thoughtful practitioners. Good teaching involves much more than technical proficiency in the execution of classroom behaviors. It requires the formulation, articulation, and justification of reasoned and informed judgments about these and other difficult matters. These three qualities, understanding, engagement, and judgment, cannot be demonstrated through passive reproduction of other people's ideas, beliefs, or actions. Instead, they are revealed in thoughtful reading, analysis, discussion, and writing.
Selected electronic
reserve and on–line database articles.
Readings Pack –
Available at Copy Maven
School Choice: The Struggle for the Soul of American Education by Peter W. Cookson, Jr.
Attendance is compulsory. Missing classes is a sure way to achieve a sense of frustration. I will take attendance, but I assume that you are here because you want to become teachers. I am a professional; you are professionals in training. Therefore, it makes no sense to me why you would purposely miss class. I will come to class prepared and I expect the very same from you. This is hard work. Unavoidable absences such as serious illness may happen, but each student has the responsibility to contact peers for notes and to find out what she or he missed.
On days marked with an * on the syllabus, students will take a short quiz at the beginning of class to assess understanding of reading and class sessions. These quizzes will be closed-book but open-note. I will not ordinarily schedule make-up quizzes; if you miss a quiz because of illness, I will re-administer the quiz providing you document your absence.
Grades are based on your performance on the quizzes and two essay examinations.
Top 5 (of 6) Quiz scores: 20%
Two reaction papers: 20%
In-class first exam: 25%
Take-home final: 30%
Participation: 5%
More than two unexcused absences will be cause for reduction of your final grade.
I take it very seriously. Please refer to the University of Delaware student handbook for policies regarding cheating and plagiarism.
I expect students will help each other in the course by disputing ideas (not personalities) and by being polite to each other and to me in the classroom.
Please keep copies of all work, both work I have not evaluated and that with written feedback. A portfolio of work can help students evaluate progress in the course, troubleshoot problems during the semester, and document achievement in the event I lose my computer files, a fire destroys my home, or someone kidnaps me.
A student should notify me in writing (you can obtain a letter from the Office of Student Disability Services) within the first week if one needs a reasonable accommodation for a disability for this course.
Please notify me in writing within the first two weeks of any day you will not be attending class for religious reasons.
I regret that I am unable, except under extraordinary circumstances, to accept written assignments by e-mail or fax. I will not under any circumstances provide grades by e-mail or phone at the end of the semester.
Course Outline
The following is a tentative schedule for the term week by week. Due dates for written are noted. Quizzes are administered at the beginning of class on days marked with an * [asterisk].
All History of Education Quarterly (HEQ) articles are in the Copy Maven packet.
For a complete listing of materials on reserve: http://www.lib.udel.edu/restricted/reserve/course/EDUC/
For materials available on electronic reserve: http://www.lib.udel.edu/restricted/reserve/ereserve/educ247/
Topics: historical perspectives on schooling and education
What is Education For?
Topics: Historical myths
Reading: Stephanie Coontz, “In Search of a Golden Age” In Context, 1989
Online at: www.context.org/ICLIB/IC21/Coontz.htm
Writing Assignment Due: "What is education for" reaction paper.
Click here for the assignment http://www.udel.edu/History/manko/educ247/1st_Reaction_Paper.htm
Topics: Education in the Early Republic
Reading: Spring, Chapter Four, “Nationalism, Moral Reform, and Charity in
the New Republic” Electronic Reserve
http://www.lib.udel.edu/restricted/reserve/ereserve/educ247/
Topics: The Politics of Common-School Reform
Reading: Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, p. 3-29. Electronic Reserve
:http://www.lib.udel.edu/restricted/reserve/ereserve/educ247/
Topic: Horace Mann
Reading: Report No. 12 of the Massachusetts School Board (1848)
Available at: http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/16.htm
or http://www.civnet.org/resoures/teach/basic/part3/16.htm
Click here for the question guide that accompanies this reading.
http://www.udel.edu/History/manko/educ247/Mann%20reading%20questions.htm
Topics: The 19th century Feminization of Teaching
Reading: Chap 4 “Women Enter Teaching” in Parkerson and Parkerson, Transitions in American Education: A Social History of Teaching (p. 63-78). Electronic Reserve
http://www.lib.udel.edu/restricted/reserve/ereserve/educ247/
Topic: Americanization and Indian Schools
Reading: http://home.epix.net/~landis/
Read, at the very least, the history, virtual tour, and primary sources sections
Video: “In the White Man’s Image”
March 6
Topic: The Progressive Era – Urban School Reform
Reading: Grant and Murray, Teaching in America, chap 5. Electronic Reserve
http://www.lib.udel.edu/restricted/reserve/ereserve/educ247/
Topic: The Progressive Era – John Dewey
Reading: Laura M. Westhoff, “The Popularization of Knowledge: John Dewey on Experts and American Democracy” HEQ 35 (1995): 27-47.
Topic: Ethnicity and Assimilation
Reading: Stephen Lassonde, “Should I Go or Should I Stay? Adolescence, School Attainment, and Parent-Child Relations in Italian Immigrant Families of New Haven, 1900-1940” HEQ 38 (1998): 37-60.
Reading: Jonathan Zimmerman, “The Queen of the Lobby: Mary Hunt, Scientific Temperance, and the Dilemma of Democratic Education in America” HEQ 32 (1992): 1-30.
For the question guide that accompanies this article, click here:
http://www.udel.edu/History/manko/educ247/Zimmerman%20STI%20article.htm
March 20
Topic: Teacher Education and Professionalization
Reading: Kate Rousmaniere, “Losing Patience and Staying Professional: Women Teachers and the Problem of Classroom Discipline in the New York City Schools in the 1920s” HEQ 34 (1994): 49-68.
Topic: Unionization
Reading:
Topic: “Free” Enterprise
Reading: Elizabeth Fones-Wolfe, “Business Propaganda in the Schools: Labor’s Struggle Against the Americans for the Competitive Enterprise System, 1949-1954” HEQ 255-278.
April 1 and 3 – Spring Break
Topic: Education and the Cold War
Reading: Joanne Brown, “A is for Atom, B is for Bomb’: Civil Defense in American Public Education, 1948-1963,” Journal of American History 75 (1988), 68-90. JSTOR
Topic: Education and the Cold War
Reading: Daniel A. Clark, “The Two Joes Meet – Joe College and Joe Veteran: The GI Bill, College Education, and Postwar American Culture” HEQ 38 (1998): 165-189.
Topic: History of (in)equality of educational opportunity
Reading: Brown v. Board of Education
*April 17*
Topic: Civil Rights
Reading: Scott Baker, “Testing Equality: The National Teacher Examination and the NAACP’s Legal Campaign to Equalize Teachers’ Salaries in the South, 1936-1963” HEQ 35 (1995): 49-64..
*April 22*
Topic:
Civil Rights
Reading: Daniel Perlstein, “Teaching Freedom: SNCC and the Creation of the Mississippi Freedom Schools” HEQ 30 (1990): 297-324
April 24
Topic: Drop Outs
Reading: Sherman Dorn, “Origins of the ‘Dropout Problem’: HEQ 33 (1993): 353-373.
April 29
Topic: Social Context of Diversity
Reading: Michelle Fine, “Why urban adolescents drop into and out of public high school.” Teachers College Record 87 (1986): 393-408. Electronic Reserve
Topic: Education and the Mass Media
Reading: Carl Kaestle, “Literacy and Diversity: Themes from a Social History of the American Reading Public” HEQ 28 (1988): 524-549.
May 6 School Choice Cookson Reading Guide click here
May 8 School Choice
Writing
Assignment Due
May 13
Topic: Women in Education
Reading: Roslyn Arlin Michelson, “Why Does Jane Read and Write So Well? The Anomaly of Women’s Achievement” Sociology of Education v62 n1 (Jan 1989): 47-63. JSTOR
May 15
Topic: Overview