Reimagining School and Society

As products of schooling, we find it natural, invisible, inevitable. And yet, modern mass schooling is a relatively recent and-with a little distance-rather strange invention. To defamiliarize this peculiar institution, this course weighs the affordances and limitations of formal and informal education, considers the historical forces that led to the rise of compulsory schooling, and explores the felt experience of being schooled. Through reading and discussion of primary texts in the social sciences and humanities, we examine the official purposes and hidden curriculum of schools, asking questions such as: Does schooling aim to socialize or to individualize? How can it serve both liberal and vocational aims? How do schools shape character and social interaction? What sort of knowledge is valorized in school? Who sets the curriculum in pluralistic society? and, Is schooling a force for social change or social reproduction? We will consider how schools might be reimagined to deal with the great educational challenges of the day. What civic education is needed to deal with entrenched inequality, surging xenophobia, fraying democracy, and the post-truth condition? How does the heedless embrace of deformative technologies set new challenges and tasks for schooling? How must education evolve in light of the climate emergency? As students, you need to understand the institution that shaped you. As citizens, you need to think about how we can reimagine school and society.