ED 172A — Race Theories and Education
[ ss ]Examines how racial hierarchies are constructed, maintained, and challenged within the U.S. public education system. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from law, sociology, philosophy, history, cultural studies, and education, the course pushes students to interrogate the political, epistemological, and material foundations of schooling. While Critical Race Theory serves as an anchoring framework, a variety of theories will be explored not as static frameworks, but as living traditions engaged in ongoing struggle, resistance, and reimagination.
Students will be expected not only to understand these theories but to actively engage with them—to apply, extend, repurpose, and imagine their use in policy, curriculum, pedagogy, and community action. Additionally, students will reflect on their own educational experiences and those of communities historically excluded from power. Together, we will analyze how schools function as both instruments of racial stratification and sites of possibility. Usually offered every year.