Welcome to Education and Inequality

“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.” 
― Assata Shakur

“It’s exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.”

-Adrienne Rich 

 

What are the ways in which injustices are entrenched and embedded in educational spaces and structures, and what are the ways in which education reflects and deepens those injustices?

Why do those injustices exist in the first place, where do they come from, and what can/should/will be done about them?

 

Lehman College Course Catalogue Description: Differences in access to, experiences in, and outcomes from schooling for categories including social class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, ability, and/or nationality. Pre-requisite: SOC 166 or any 200-level SOC course.

My description: This course will deploy the sociological imagination in an effort to understand the intimate links between education and inequality in a United States context. We will critically examine the ways in which systems of oppression, subjugation, and exploitation engender and shape educational inequalities through an excavation of topical areas with an emphasis on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and (dis)ability. The purpose of this course is to acknowledge and identify educational injustices so the process of deconstructing and dismantling them can be strengthened, re-envisioned, and reimagined for educational justice, transformation, and ultimately liberation.