Fall 2020 U.E. 70200: “Historical Perspectives on Urban Education”

Syllabus

BEFORE THE FIRST CLASS ON August 26^th, please read these three pieces on history and historiography in education, which are all available in the Library on the Academic Commons group site:

• Judith Kafka, “In Search of a Grand Narrative: The Turbulent History of Teaching.” In  Handbook on the Research of Teaching, Fifth Edition. (American Educational Research Association, 2016), pp. 69-126.
• David Garcia and Tara Yosso. “Recovering Our Past: A Methodological Reflection.” History of Education Quarterly, Volume 60, No 1 February 2020, pp. 59-72.
• Ansley Erickson, “How/Should We Generalize?” History of Education Quarterly, Volume 60, No 1 February 2020, pp. 86-97.

August 26: Course Introduction and Conceptualizing the History of Public Education:

Discussion Questions: What is historical thinking or understanding? Why study the history of urban education in an interdisciplinary doctoral program like Urban Education? What questions do you have about the historiography of education and how we “do” history after completing these readings? What do you hope to learn in this course as the semester unfolds?

Come to the first Zoom class prepared to talk about your own experiences and feelings about studying history, doing historical research and writing, and your own thoughts about history as a scholarly discipline and as a mode of intellectual inquiry.

September 2: The Emergence of the Common School & the Growth of the U.S. Public Education System in the 19^th Century

Readings:

• Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, Preface; Ch. 1; Ch. 3 – 6; Ch., 7, pp. 136-52; pp. 171-81; & Ch. 9.
• Katznelson & Weir, Schooling for All, Ch. Intro. & Ch. 1 & 2, pp. 1-57 (Scanned and available on Academic Commons group site).

Primary Sources:

• Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1, Ch. 17 (1835), “How the Education, the Habits, and the Practical Experience of the Americans Promote the Success of Their Democratic Institutions” (available on Academic Commons group site).
• Horace Mann, Lecture on Education (1840), pp. 3-6; 54-62 (available on Google Books at http://bit.ly/xc7EdU).
• John R. Commons and Associates, Documentary History of American Industrial Society, Vol. V, pp. 94-114, Documents from 1830 on American working people’s attitudes on the “Education Question” (available on Academic Commons group site)

September 9: Black Education during Slavery and Reconstruction

Readings:

• Heather Andrea Williams, Self Taught (UNC Press, 2005) – Introduction and Chapter 1 (available on Academic Commons group site).
• Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, any paperback edition, but if you want to buy it, we strongly recommend the 2002 Bedford paperback, with an introduction by David Blight (also available online at: http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/): Read at minimum chapters 6 & 7, focusing on how Douglass learns to read and write and the meaning of education to enslaved African-Americans.
• W.E.B. DuBois, Souls of Black Folk, purchase any edition in paperback or e-book (also available online at: http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html ). Read Chap. 2, “Of the Dawn of Freedom.”
• Herbert Gutman, Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class (Pantheon Books, 1987), Chapter 6, “Schools for Freedom: The Post-Emancipation Origins of Afro-American Education,” pp. 260-297 (available on Academic Commons group site).
• James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1988), Introduction and Ch. 1, “Ex-Slaves and the Rise of Universal Education in the South, 1860-1880.” (Also available as an electronic book on the GC library website at http://site.ebrary.com/lib/gc/detail.action?docID=10367494)

September 16: The Debate about Industrial vs. General Education of African-Americans (Guest presenter: Dr. Brian Jones, Associate Education Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

Readings:

• W.E.B. DuBois, Souls of Black Folk, any edition in paperback or e-book (also available online at: http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html ). Read the rest of it, but at minimum, chapters 3, 5-6, & 9.
• Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery, any edition in paperback (also available online at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WASHINGTON/toc.html ). Read Ch. 3, 5, 7-8, 10 & 14.
• James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, Chs. 2 & 3, “The Hampton Model” and “Education and the Race Problem in the New South.”

September 23: Settler Colonialism, Citizenship, and the “Education” of Native Americans in the post-Civil War era

Readings:

• David Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928, Preface, Ch. 1, 4 & 5 (available on group site on Academic Commons).
• Kim Cary Warren. The Quest for Citizenship: African American and Native American Education in Kansas, 1880-1935 (2010) (available on group site on Academic Commons).
• Wikipedia entry on “American Indian Boarding Schools” online at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schools [be sure to examine the references, further readings, and external links at the end of the entry].

Primary Sources:

• “Kill the Indian and Save the Man”: Capt. Richard H. Pratt on the Education of Native Americans” (1892), History Matters document available online at: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929
• David Johnson. “The Indian Today, The Indian Yesterday, the Indian Tomorrow” The Indian School Journal, 1918 https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/the-indian-school-journal (pages 208-209, images #2 and #3 on the reader)

Suggested Reading (if you need historical background on the period):

• American Social History Project, Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s History, Vol. 1, Ch. 13, “Change and Violence on the Frontier”, pp. 632-45 (the whole textbook is also available as an Open Educational Resource, but you’ll need to create an i.d. to login to the OER at: https://wba.ashpc.ml).

September 30: Progressivism, Progressive Education and School Reform

Readings:

• John Dewey, School and Society (1899-1900), “The School and Social Progress,” pp. 17-44; “The School and the Life of the Child,” pp. 45-73,” available online from Google Books: https://bit.ly/2K2wTKA.
• John Dewey, “The School as Social Center,” Addresses & Proceedings of the National Education Assn. of the U.S., 1902 (available on group site on Academic Commons).
• Kate Rousmaniere, City Teachers, Ch. 1, pp. 10-27. [available as an e-book on the GC Library site at: https://cuny-gc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma990042392210106140&context=L&vid=01CUNY_GC:CUNY_GC&lang=en&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,Kate%20Rousmaniere&offset=0 and click on “EBSCOhost Ebooks: CUNY Collection”]
• Alan Sadovnik & Susan Semel, eds., Founding Mothers and Others: Women Educational Leaders During the Progressive Era, Ch. 1, “Charlotte Hawkins Brown and the Palmer Institute”HH. (available on group site on Academic Commons).
• David Garcia, Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence, and the Struggle for Educational Equality (University of California Press, 2018), Chapter 1. (available on group site on Academic Commons; also available as a full e-book on the Library website: https://cuny-gc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,%3F&tab=CourseReserves&search_scope=CourseReserves&vid=01CUNY_GC:CUNY_GC&facet=crsinstrc,include,Brier%20Stephen).
• Dan Perlstein. “Schooling the New Negro: Progressive Education, Black Moderntity, and the Long Harlem Renaissance.” in Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community, edited by Ansley Erickson and Ernst Morrell (Columbia University Press, 2019) https://harlemeducationhistory.library.columbia.edu/book/chapters/01/

FIRST PAPER DUE ON Tuesday, October 6^th by Midnight (instructions on submitting the papers to follow)

October 7: Vocationalism, Social Efficiency, and the Rise of the Modern High School in the North and in the South, 1910-30

Readings:

• Kate Rousmaniere, City Teachers, all (including Intro), except Ch. 1.
• James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, Ch. 6.
• Carlos Blanton, “They Cannot Master Abstractions But They Can Be Made Into Efficient Workers,” Social Science Quarterly (2000), (available on group site on Academic Commons).

Primary Sources:

• National Education Association, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education: A Report of the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education (1918) (available on group site on Academic Commons).

October 14: NO CLASS; Classes follow Monday schedule

October 21: The Postwar Crisis in Urban Public Education: The Struggle over Segregation in New York City (Guest Presenter: Clarence Taylor, Prof. of History, Emeritus, Baruch College and Graduate Center, CUNY)

Readings:

• Adina Back, “Blacks, Jews and the Struggle to Integrate Brooklyn’s Junior High School 258: A Cold War Story,” Journal of American Ethnic History (Winter, 2001), pp. 38-69 (available on group site on Academic Commons).
• Matthew Delmont, “The Origins of Anti-Busing Politics,” in Why Busing Failed (2016) (available on group site on Academic Commons).
• Clarence Taylor, Knocking at Our Own Door: Milton Galamison and the Struggle to Integrate New York City Schools, Chs. 4 – 6 (available on group site on Academic Commons).
• Jerald Podair, The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis, Introduction and Chs. 1-3, pp. 1-70.

Primary Sources:

• U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, 1954, available online at: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/347/483.html.

 October 28: New York City, the Struggle over Community Control, and Its Aftermath: the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville Strike

Readings:

• Clarence Taylor, Knocking at Our Own Door: Milton Galamison and the Struggle to Integrate New York City Schools, Ch. 7 (available on Academic Commons group site).
• Jerald Podair, The Strike that Changed New York, Chs. 4, pp. 71-102 & Ch. & 7, pp. 153-82.
• “School Colors” podcasts: Episode 2: “Power to the People” and Episode 3: “Third Strike”, https://www.schoolcolorspodcast.com/
• Charles Isaacs, Inside Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Preface and Part 1, pp. 1-44.
• Stephen Brier, “The Ideological and Organizational Origins of the United Federation of Teachers’ Opposition to the Community Control Movement in the New York City Public Schools, 1960-1968,” Labour/Le Travail 73 (Spring 2014), pp. 179-193 (available on Academic Commons group site).
• Caroline Loomis, “As far as I’m concerned, they’re on strike because they’re against me”: Children’s Voices in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Community Control Struggle, 1968-69,” TRAUE journal, Vol. III http://bit.ly/1AZWI2P

On Zoom: Screening of Eyes on the Prize, Series 2, Episode #5, “Power,” which includes a section on the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Community Control struggles.

November 4: The Aftermath of the Struggle for Community Control in the New York City Public Schools

Readings:

• Charles Isaacs, Inside Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Part 3, pp. 157-263.
• Heather Lewis, New York City Public Schools from Brownsville to Bloomberg, pp. 55-132 (available on group site on Academic Commons).
• Russell Rickford, We Are An African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination, Ch. 2, “Black Studies and the Politics of ‘Relevance'”, (available on group site on Academic Commons).

November 11: The Expansion of Public Higher Education, the Birth of CUNY, and the Struggle for Open Admissions, 1946 to 1970

Readings:

• Brier & Fabricant, Austerity Blues, Chapters 2 (all) & 3 (pp. 65-80).
• Margaret Nash, “Entangled Pasts: Land-Grant Colleges and American Indian Dispossession.” History of Education Quarterly Volume 59, No. 4 (November 2019): 437-467. (available on group site on Academic Commons)
• Harold Wechsler, The Qualified Student: A History of Selective College Admissions in America, John Wiley & Sons, 1977, Ch. 11, “Higher Education for All: The Mission of the City University of New York” (available on group site on Academic Commons).
• Tahir Butt, “Free Tuition and Expansion in New York Public Higher Education,” TRAUE journal, Vol. III http://bit.ly/1AC6Kpw
• Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus, Ch. 4: “Brooklyn College Belongs to Us,” pp. 114-141 (available on group site on Academic Commons)
• David Lavin, et. al., Right vs. Privilege: The Open-Admissions Experiment at CUNY (1981), Chs. 1 & 2 (available on group site on Academic Commons).

Primary Sources:

• The Morrill Land Grant College Act, 1862, available online at http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=33&page=transcript
• Higher Education for Democracy: A Report of the President [Truman]’s Commission on Higher Education, Vol. 1, Establishing the Goals (New York, 1947), selected pages available online at: http://bit.ly/1EsPRD4
• CUNY Digital History Archive (Explore the “Municipal College Expansion” and the “Creation of CUNY and Open Admissions” materials under “Browse by Time Period” tab and be prepared to report in class about what you found in at least one of those collections)
• CUNY, “The Open Admissions Story” (1970) (scanned and available on group site on Academic Commons).

November 18: From Open Admissions at CUNY to the New York City Fiscal Crisis, 1970-76

Readings:

• James Traub, City on a Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College (Addison-Wesley, 1994), Ch. 3 & Ch. 4, pp. 43-80. (available on group site on Academic Commons)
• Brier & Fabricant, Austerity Blues, pp. 80-88.
• Newt Davidson Collective, Crisis at CUNY, all (available on group site on Academic Commons)
• Kim Phillips-Fein, Fear City, Ch. 15, pp. 241-55 (available on group site on Academic Commons).
• Joshua Freeman, Working Class New York, Ch. 15, “The Fiscal Crisis,” pp. 256-287 (available on group site on Academic Commons).
• Stephen Brier,. 2017. “Why the History of CUNY Matters: Using the CUNY Digital History Archive to Teach CUNY’s Past.” Radical Teacher108: 28–35. https://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/radicalteacher/article/view/357.

Primary Sources:

• CUNY Digital History Archive (Explore several collections, including but not limited to “SEEK,” “Queens College Campus Unrest,” and “Oral Histories of Open Admissions,” under “Browse By Collection” tab and be prepared to report in class about what you found in at least one of those collections)
• “Open Admissions and Remedial Education at CUNY,” Report III of the Mayor’s (Rudolph Giuliani’s) Advisory Task Force on CUNY (1996), pp. 1-32. Available online at: http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/rwg/cuny/html/admissions.html and available on group site on Academic Commons).

SECOND PAPER DUE ON Sunday, November 22nd, by 11:59pm

 November 25: Class cancelled for Thanksgiving holiday

 December 2: School “Reform” at the Turn of the 21^st Century (Guest Presenter: Elizabeth Todd-Breland, Prof. of History, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago)

Readings:

• Elizabeth Todd-Breland, A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago Since the 1960s (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). (Read the whole book, with the most attention paid to the Introduction, Chapters 5,6, and the Epilogue)

Primary Source:

A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, National Commission on Excellence in Education, Washington, D.C. 1983. (Introduction)

https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html

December 9: The Present and Future of Public K-12 and Higher Education

• Noliwe Rooks, Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and The End of Public Education (The New Press, 2017), Chapters 1, 5-7 (available as an ebook on GC E-Book library site: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cunygc/detail.action?docID=5751104&pq-origsite=primo ; you will need to register with Adobe Digital Editions to be able to read it electronically)
• School Colors episode on charter schools: https://www.schoolcolorspodcast.com/episodes/episode-6-mo-charters-mo-problems
• Brittney Lewer. “Pursing ‘Real Power to Parents’: Babette Edwards’s Activism from Community Control to Charter Schools” in Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community, edited by Ansley Erickson and Ernst Morrell (Columbia University Press, 2019) https://harlemeducationhistory.library.columbia.edu/book/chapters/12/

 FINAL RESEARCH PAPER DUE Wednesday, December 16^th by Midnight