Course Descriptions

HS 360F — Balance Wheel of the Social Machinery? Context and Contention in K-12 Education

Meets for one-half semester and yields half-course credit.

One of public education's best-known founders, Horace Mann, told Massachusetts' educational leaders: "Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer...the balance-wheel of the social machinery." In 2011, then-U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, told graduates, "In America... education is still the great equalizer." The intertwined objectives of this course are to 1) Interrogate this dominant narrative, which casts public schools as society's "equalizers" 2) Identify and analyze major barriers that prevent schools from playing this transformative role and 3) By exploring a range of leading social-justice oriented solutions, build understanding of policies, practices and movements that aspire to push schools closer to an "equalizer" role for more people. Usually offered every year.
Susan Eaton