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    EDUCATION 240-3
    SOCIAL ISSUESIN EDUCATION
    FALL, 1986
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    Instructor: Suzanne DeCastell
    Mondays and Wednesdays
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    Location: AQ3153
    11: 3
    0
    am. - 12:20am.
    plus one hour of
    tutorial
    per week
    OBJECTIVES:
    1. To provide a broad base of information about education and schooling
    with specific focus on B.C. and Canada.
    2. To study current debates about the aims, practices and effects of the
    public school system.
    3.
    To supply background knowledge in the foundational areas of sociology,
    history, philosophy and psychology as these provide the basis for
    informed critical reflection on the structure and function of educational
    institutions.
    PROCEDURE:
    Lectures will generally be on Mondays. Weekly readings will also be
    assigned on Monday. Wednesdays will usually consist of half-hour films,
    followed by a short lecture or discussion, or occasionally, a guest speaker.
    Seminars are for clarifying lectures and readings, and students will be
    expected to attend and to participate in discussion.
    TOPICS:
    - historical overview of education in B.C.
    - the structure of the B.C. educational system
    - the curriculum
    - Images of Education: What the papers say
    - how the schools construct the"normal" family
    - educational 'quality": Literacy crisis and falling standards
    - human capital and the measurement paradigm: Turning Quality into
    quality
    - how can schools reproduce society
    - the testing and streaming of students and their teachers
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    - contestation and resistance
    - race-class-sex: a look at the reproduction of inequality in Canadian schools
    - from yippie to yuppie in two generations: educational institutions and
    the temptations of the marketplace
    REQUIRED TEXTS
    June Purvis and Margaret Hales. Achievement and Inequality in Education
    (ed) Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.
    As well, a xeroxed collection of readings will be provided to students at cost.
    COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
    Students will be expected to complete all assigned readings and to attend all
    seminars. Assessment will be based on five short assignments; of 2O each.
    One of these will be a mid-term test, written in class. Students will be
    permitted to rewrite any one of four written assignments, but not to re-take
    the mid term test. There will be no final exam in this course.

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