Class, Race, and American Education  
Michael Clapper  
Fall 2009 

Formal Course Description:  
This course will explore dimensions of race and class across the history of American education.  While we will not be bound by particular chronologies or narratives, I hope that this course offers a window into many different approaches utilized to address how race and class have shaped the daily experiences of students, teachers, and communities. We will also consider how policy makers and scholars have grappled with these ideas, and the ways in which race and class continue to shape educational worlds.  

Informal Course Description:  
Throughout the course, I want you to consider why it is so difficult to talk about race and class, and why policymakers and school folks have such a hard time addressing issues of equality and issues of opportunity.   You’ll often hear folks say that class is invisible in American life, or that race and class cannot be separated: what do these claims mean? Why do they matter for school reformers?  

 
Texts
Aries, Elizabeth. Race and Class Matters at an Elite College. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008.
Fecho, Bob. "Is This English?" : Race, Language, and Culture in the Classroom, The Practitioner Inquiry Series. New York: Teachers College Press, 2004.
Henig, Jeffrey R. The Color of School Reform : Race, Politics, and the Challenge of Urban Education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. 
Katznelson, Ira. When Affirmative Action Was White : An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.
Lareau, Annette. Unequal Childhoods : Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Lee, Stacey J. Up against Whiteness : Race, School, and Immigrant Youth. New York: Teachers College Press, 2005.
Lukas, J. Anthony. Common Ground : A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families. 1st ed. New York: Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1985.
Oakes, Jeannie. Keeping Track : How Schools Structure Inequality. 2nd ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005.
Perry, Theresa, and Lisa D. Delpit. The Real Ebonics Debate : Power, Language, and the Education of African-American Children. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.
Pollock, Mica. Colormute : Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Rothstein, Richard, Economic Policy Institute., and Teachers College Columbia University. Class and Schools : Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute : [New York, N.Y.] : Teachers College, Columbia University, 2004.
Tough, Paul. Whatever It Takes : Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2008.

Reader: (online in italics, course reader in bold)  
Bazelon, Emily. “The Next Kind of Integration,” The New York Times, 20 July 2008.    
Cohen chapter from Consumer’s Republic , 194-256   
Coleman, James Samuel, United States. Office of Education., and National Center for Educational Statistics. Equality of Educational Opportunity. Washington]: U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education; [for sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1966.  (introduction/summary)   
Delpit, Lisa D. Other People's Children : Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton, 1995. 
Holt, Thomas. "Marking: Race, Race-Making, and the Writing of History." American Historical Review (1995): 1-20. 
Katz, Michael B. The Irony of Early School Reform; Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts. Cambridge, Mass.,: Harvard University Press, 1968. 
Katz, Michael B., Mark Stern, and Jamie Fader. "The New African American Inequality " Journal of American History (2005). 
Kozol, Jonathan. "Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid." Harper's (2005). 
Lee, Stacey J. Unraveling The "Model Minority" Stereotype : Listening to Asian American Youth. New York: Teachers College Press, 1996.

Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993. 
Perlstein, Linda. Tested : One American School Struggles to Make the Grade. 1st ed. New York: H. Holt and Co., 2007. 
Rury, John L. "Race, Space, and the Politics of Chicago's Public Schools:  Benjamin Willis and the Tragedy of Urban Public Education." History of Education Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1999). 
Sugrue, Thomas J. ""The Structures of Urban Poverty:  The Reorganization of Space and Work in Three Periods of American History." In The Underclass Debate: Views from History, edited by Michael B. Katz, 85-117. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. 
Yaffe, Allison. Other People's Children. New Bruinswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007. (excerpt)   
Zimmerman, Jonathan. "Browning the Textbook." History of Education Quarterly 44, no. 1 (2008): 46-69. 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Part One:  Framing the Debate:   
Week one: why is it so hard to talk about race and class?  How do schools inhibit or facilitate this process?  Within a larger context, do schools create (or re-create) racial and/or class divisions?  What are the issues we face as scholars, citizens, and/or future teachers?   
Reading:  Pollock  
 
Week two:  What does it mean to talk about race and education?  How do political and economic structures shape the options available to families and students?    
Reading:  Tough; Katz, Stern, and Fader;  
 
Week three:  Why are class and race inseparable in the United States?   
Readings:  Rothstein (intro and chapter one); Massey/Denton; Bazelon;  
 
Three weeks: Modes of study   
Week four:      Historical Analysis 
How have notions of class and race evolved through time? What are the ways that historians have thought about these issues? How might their approach be useful? What limitations do you see?   Where do these readings see race and class being produced or made?  
Readings: Holt; Katz/Ravitch; Sugrue; Cohen   
 
Week five:      Ethnography  
What does the close description of families and children offer to students of class and race?  How does this approach help shape understandings of how race and class are made?   
Readings: Lareau (pay very close attention to her footnotes and the appendix describing the methodology employed)  
 
Week six:       Journalism     
Like Paul Tough (week two), these folks are free of academic apparatus and tend to write in a very different way.  How does their work compare to that of Lareau?  How do class and race emerge in these sorts of accounts?  
Readings:   Lukas; Perlstein, L.; Yaffe, A.   
 
Three weeks: The American city  
Week seven:    How are class and race related to "achievement"?   What stereotypes exist?  Why do issues seem to appear and then fade away?   
Readings:  Coleman; Rothstein (ch. 2-) : Lee   
 
Week eight:       Schools in cities 
How do school districts and other institutions address issues of race and class? How do school bureaucracies function?  What is the role of politics in shaping change in urban education?   
Readings:    Rury; Henig 

Week Nine:  Multiculturalism: Curricular responses to inequality   
What are the ways in which school districts have attempted to address issues of race and class within the curriculum?   
Readings: Perry; (need a good article on ELL here); Zimmerman    
 
Three weeks:  the American Suburb  
Week Ten:   Little boxes and the role of education  
When we talk of race and class, there’s an immediate assumption that those terms are most relevant to urban life.  What, then, does it mean to consider how race and class work within a suburban setting?  Readings:  Oakes    

Week Eleven:  Social life of Suburban schools   
While much ink has been spent on urban schools, what about day-to-day life in suburban schools?  How do race and class emerge?   
Readings:  Pope   

Week Twelve:  Colleges  
The connections between race and class and higher education might seem obvious; how were these connections forged?   
Readings:   Aries

 
Part Four: Flashpoints for Race and Class   
Week Thirteen:       Immigration  
From the Melting Pot to Multiculturalism: there have been many responses to immigration; how, then, have schools addressed immigrant students?   
Readings: Lee;  
 
Week Fourteen:   Policy formation  
What are some of the ways that perceptions of race and class help shape policy decisions, on local and federal levels?    
Readings:   Katznelson;   
 
Week Fifteen:     Literacy    
Addressing how children learn to read has been an issue that has emerged throughout the semester.  Consider this account of an educator in North Philadelphia and his attempts at creating a new kind of classroom: how might this work translate elsewhere?  Do you see his approach as viable?   
 
Readings:  Fecho; Delpit;

 

Assignments

Take Home Midterm: (20%)  there will be a take home midterm distributed two weeks before the midpoint of the class. It will consist of three questions; you will select two and use the readings and discussions to construct essays…    
Friend of the Court Brief (20%)   
There are a number of recent and pending Supreme Court cases around questions of education and race/class.   Using our class readings as a starting point, you will write a 10-12 page brief that offers a synopsis of the recent research and arguing for one side or the other.  I will post  a list of cases and will meet with you to discuss potential literature to draw upon.    
Diversity Commission Assignment (20%)   
Many local educational institutions find themselves in the position to address issues of race and class.  We will meet with some of these leaders (in-class) and hear some of the ways that they have begun to consider meeting these issues and some of the obstacles they’ve confronted.   After we’ve identified a site/institution, you will research the issues unique to their particular location, and begin formulating a tentative proposal as to how to best begin conversations around race and class.   
Film/Novel Analysis (20%) 
For this assignment I would like for you to select a recent novel or film and assess their representations of race and class.  What explicit or implicit ways do themes of race or class emerge? What impact do you think their representations might have?  Using the works we’ve read in class as a starting point, first survey the text, and then use the second half of the paper to reflect generally on race and class in American life.    
Participation, Class Leadership, and Discussion Posts   20%   
For this course to work, you must be in class and ready to go.  There are multiple ways to participate -- on-line, in small groups, in large group discussions -- for those comfortable with different modes of conversation.   You must be ready to engage me, your classmates, and your own beliefs about race, class, and education for this class to matter.    
(7%)  Attendance: no absences (all seven points).   Each additional absence subtracts three points from this grade. 
(7%)  Course Discussion Board:  Before Tuesday night at midnight, write a brief paragraph describing your response to the reading.  It doesn’t have to be very long but ought to outline something you found provocative or troubling about the reading.  Nine or more post earns all seven points; eight posts earns four points; anything less earns zero points.  Posts not submitted by the time deadline will not count. Several examples of the kinds of posts I’m looking for are available on the discussion board.       
(6%) Participation: you need to be there each week.  To earn all six points, you should be a frequent participant who makes accurate, considered comments on the readings; a student who draws insightful connections to other students’ ideas and their own.  You should be someone who participates willingly in group activities and projects; serves as a leader or a scribe regularly during group process.  Perhaps most important, you should be someone who provides significant direction and service to the classroom.