Beyond the Classroom:SchlInst

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Beyond the Classroom: Schools & Institutions. Institutions provide structure and community in our everyday lives: We spend time with our families, live in neighborhoods, work at businesses and with customers, participate in religious communities, cultivate friend groups, rely on the criminal justice system to enforce social order, and take care of our health. And, of course, we go to school. This course explores how schools intersect with other social institutions in our lives. We will follow the educational life course, starting with how families choose schools (and therefore neighborhoods). We will then discuss how society depends on schools for social provision while education has become more privatized, how schools are implicated in the criminal justice system, and how schools remediate or exacerbate healthcare issues. We will then cover the interplay between the labor market and education, as well as how adults balance education with family and work. Throughout, students will use specific research and policy cases to contend with the tensions between the purpose of education in society and the practical ways schooling fits into our lives. The course will be largely discussion-based with periodic reflection memos, concluding with a final presentation in which students examine the cross-institutional implications of an education policy.