TOPICS: DEMOCRACY LAB: EDUCATIONAL JUSTICE in Fall 2022 (PO3091B)

In discussing the “democratic ideal” of education, John Dewey emphasized two traits that link the educational experience and democracy. The aim of education, he argued, is to “generate greater reliance upon the recognition of mutual interests” and “continuous readjustment through meeting new situations.” Building from this observation, the Democracy Lab combines Dewey’s insights into education and democracy with recent trends in design-thinking pedagogy. The course focuses on generating opportunities for students to build a mutual interest based on their differences and provide a context for them to deploy this mutual interest toward solving a specific problem. To this end, the Democracy Lab explores key challenges to our contemporary democracy. This semester’s topic is educational justice.

Education is believed to be the strongest engine of change. It is trusted to restore justice and remedy social wrongs where law and politics fail to deliver. But education can also perpetuate injustice and become an instrument of oppression. Even with the best intentions, educational policies often uphold hidden biases, sidestep pressing moral dilemmas, or hopelessly fall behind current social needs. This course seeks to understand both the promise and limits of educational tools in achieving social justice.

In this Democracy Lab we will begin by exploring conceptual and theoretical schemes presently available for understanding contemporary controversies about education such as systemic barriers to education, links between lack of education and exploitation, bodily autonomy, “conversion therapy”, “don’t say gay” laws, science and religion in schools, homeschooling and unschooling, and digital transformation of education. We will explore how education constructs and is constructed by culture, religion, and economy; how it affects and is affected by the institutions of family, community, and state; and how it can achieve equality or inequality. In the second half of the c