As of Fall 2020, the “Cities and Schools” and “Power/Knowledge” pathways combined into the Power, Knowledge and Practice pathway. For students enrolled in the Cities and Schools pathway prior to Fall 2020:
Examine the policies and partnerships that shape learning and development in urban centers.
Cities and schools are ordinary and extraordinary spaces. Both are at the center of young people’s socialization, public discourse and often-heated political debate. In American cities, for example, where more than half of the country’s 50 million public school students are enrolled, schools are simultaneously critiqued as engines of social reproduction, defended as sites of opportunity and upward mobility, and envisioned as seedbeds for resistance, interrogation and social transformation. A reflection of our country’s history, a microcosm of its contemporary challenges, and an undeniable contributor to its future, cities’ schools are worthy subjects of probing examination and sites for experiential learning.
They are also, of course, not the only urban institutions and educational spaces worthy of study here in the United States or elsewhere around the world; indeed, much can be learned from considering more broadly how cities take shape and where within them teaching and learning occur, including those spaces not counted as “school”—for example, museums, housing facilities, community groups, churches, public parks, and so on. Thus this Pathway can and will serve as an intellectual space for analyzing cities and urban educational spaces expansively and comparatively.
To become a student of this Pathway—to examine the policies, pedagogies and partnerships that shape learning and development in urban centers—is to inquire deeply into and around key institutions of public life in order to become more educated about cities as they are and as they could be. Joining this Pathway also means making a commitment to understanding our immediate context with depth and nuance and to partner in meaningful, reciprocal ways with local agencies, educational organizations and community members.
