Course Details

Course offered Spring 2013

Honors 232 A: Political and Moral Context of Education and Schooling (SSc)

Honors 232 A: Political and Moral Context of Education and Schooling (SSc)

SLN 14570 (View UW registration info »)

Roger Soder (Education)
Office: MGH 211, Box 353600
Email: rsoder@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 30 students

Schooling is a major enculturating function of every society. It is a deeply embedded function in a society, so deeply embedded that it is often difficult to see how schooling works, and it is difficult to identify-let alone address- critical questions about its purpose, design, and functions. As the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski said, nothing is as difficult to see as the obvious.

Undergraduate students have spent more time in formal schooling agencies than in any other agency in society (other than the family). Familiarity with schooling is often an obstacle to seeing the obvious. Honors students in particular usually have this difficulty. Honors students most likely have done very well in school: they know how to do school, as it were, and they have been rewarded accordingly. But doing well in school is not the same as understanding the social, economic, and political functions of education and schooling.

This course is directed to the developing and deepening of that understanding. We will identify and address some of the major perennial and critical questions of education and schooling, with a focus on the moral and political context out of which those questions have emerged. Our primary learning approach will be through close reading and discussion of classic and current texts plus conversations with selected education scholar/practitioners.

Some of the questions to be addressed:

1. What has been the historical role – and what should be the role- of schools in determining and legitimating the basic question of who gets what, considered within the context of such variables as social class, race, gender, economics, and culture?
2. What is the relationship between a given political regime and schooling in that regime?
3. What are the appropriate roles of higher education? Who determines these roles?
4. What is the appropriate role of the teacher? Given that role, how should teachers be prepared and selected and assessed?
5. Who should determine what is to be taught and how it is to be taught?
6. How should schools be funded (if at all)?
7. How do we know if we have “good” schools?
8. What are some of the factors that limit efforts to change education and schooling?

Requirements: Fourteen short (1-2 pages, single-spaced) summary/analytical papers will be prepared for most of the readings; one longer (9-10 pages, single-spaced) final paper synthesizing and discussing the whole. No formal final exam. Numerical grading on a 4.0 scale. Given that class discussion is very important, consistent attendance is critical.

I’ll be glad to talk further about any aspect of the course. You can reach me, Roger Soder, at rsoder@u.washington.edu.