Discipline and Punish: Historical Insights on School Punishment

Catalog description

School discipline has played a key function in broader efforts to maintain social order. This seminar traces historic processes and recurrent themes that have contributed to the punitive direction of school discipline reform. We will take seriously factors such as race, gender and class in the school punishment phenomenon and consider how reformers, students, and educators have experienced and shaped policies related to punishment and criminality. We will also consider debates surrounding, discipline reform, and police abolition in schools. By the end of the course students should be able to engage with the historical and theoretical debates, synthesize claims made in readings and evaluate evidence used in the text. Relatedly students will be expected to effectively communicate and make analytic connections in writing and in class discussions.