300-400 level courses are on special topics and are more advanced. They often presuppose some basic knowledge in the field and should be more difficult courses than courses at the 1-199 levels. The department is trying to insure that some 400 level courses, although substantially more difficult, are also small in size; they thus may be suitable for graduate students.
HIST 463 History of American Education
Taught as schedule allows (consult the Course Directory)
American education is full of puzzles. Inequalities among schools contradict the nation’s commitment to equality of opportunity. Once the international leader in education, America now trails other nations in achievement and in the proportion of its young people who graduate from college. Nearly every public figure proclaims that education is the key to America’s future success, but we do not pay or treat public school teachers like professionals. By placing the burden of solving virtually every social problem on the schools, we ask them to take on tasks whose solution belongs elsewhere and for which they are not equipped. We cling to a definition of “public” in education created in the mid-nineteenth century. We are supposed to believe that public education is crucial for democracy, but we have narrowed discussion of the purposes of education to their cash value and allowed schools to reproduce as well as modify inequality. How are we to make sense of these puzzles? We cannot even begin without turning to history. American education, as it exists today, is the outcome of conflicting goals and processes, some older than the nation itself. It is their story that this course tells.
Course Syllabus (PDF)
