ReverenceOrRevolt:Ed,Cult,Pols

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course is designed to help students of international affairs discover different facets of education understood as an evolving historical concept and continuing socio-political practice. It proposes to interrogate the ideological foundations on which the notion of education rests, but which can often be taken for granted and left unexamined. The key question to explore through selected readings, class discussions, and written responses concerns the dual role of education. On the one hand it is generally acknowledged that its intention is to instigate personal, cultural, economic and social change. On the other hand, its fundamental but latent goal is to maintain the status quo and produce compliant and cooperative members of society.