History of American Education

3 credits · Graduate School

This doctoral seminar will examine the social, political, intellectual, and organizational history of American education in the twentieth century. The class will read and analyze some of the best work on the history of K-12 and higher education together. My hope is to begin to erase the intellectually expedient but artificial boundary that scholars have erected between the two sectors by deploying a comparative approach. By thinking of the study of K-16 as a single pipeline, albeit a circuitous one with many blockages and leaks, this class will broaden students' understanding of the American education system writ large, alerting them to the distant origins of the nation's education debates and to the longstanding efforts to improve the system in the last century. At the end of this course, students will possess a more historically grounded conception of the American way of education - an appreciation of the system as an institution deeply rooted in the nation's history that endures despite the many calls for its reform if not reconstruction. [3]