Team-taught by Gray Cox and Bonnie Tai

This course explores the relationship between politico-economic ideology, sociocultural context, and schooling. Through historical and contemporary case studies of fascist, communist, theocratic, and democratic nation states, we will consider how different educational systems reflect, resist, reproduce, and inculcate national or cultural worldviews. Students will gain factual knowledge and interdisciplinary skills to describe, analyze, and evaluate relationships between educational systems and their roles in preparing future parents, workers, citizens, and humans in distinct cultures and nations. Students will engage in ethnographic research in classrooms on MDI and in Quebec. Each will also research a case of their choice, looking at how that educational system prepares their citizenry and considering alternative practices that are consistent with and might better serve that country's ideals. Evaluation will be based on multiple assessments including self-,
peer-, and teacher evaluation of class participation, responses to readings, fieldwork, and case study.

This course is offered approximately every other year.