Synopses & Reviews
Eick explores the history of a comprehensive high school from the world views of its assorted student body, confronting issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, nationality, and religion. Her case study examines the continuities and differences in student relationships over five decades. While she discusses the "dark side" of the high school experience, she also presents hopeful signs and alternatives. This history comes alive through rich oral testimonies that contribute to the ongoing search to make high school life a meaningful and constructive experience for young people living in an increasingly complex society.
Synopsis
In 1953 African-American poet Langston Hughes began corresponding with several South African writers variously affiliated with the legendary Drum magazine. Published here for the first time, these letters provide an invaluable glimpse into the growing repression of South African apartheid and the slow but painful progress of the American Civil Rights movement. Revealing a fascinating set of transatlantic friendships between a titan of American letters and a group of writers that includes Peter Clarke, Todd Matshikiza, Bloke Modisane, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Peter Abrahams, and Richard Rive, this volume highlights Hughes's enormous influence on the rise of English-language literature by black and mixed-race writers in South Africa.
Synopsis
This history traces evolving cross-group relationships in a comprehensive high school located in a town that shifted from a rural, predominantly white middle-class population to a more urban, multiracial population between 1950 and 2000. Oral historical, archival, and demographic research revealed the ways in which institutional norms, shifting demographics, and students diverse backgrounds intersected to shape peer relationships across racial, gender, and class divides.
About the Author
Caroline Eick is Assistant Professor of Education at Mount St. Marys University. She received her Ph.D. (2005) in educational policy studies with specialization in history of education from the University of Maryland, and her undergraduate degree from McGill University in Montréal, Canada. Her present and forthcoming publications include: “Student Relationships across Markers of Difference in a Baltimore County, Maryland, Comprehensive High School, 1950-1969,” History of Education Quarterly 50 (2010); “Teachers as Cultural Mediators: A Comparison of the Accountability Era to the Assimilation Era. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 7 (2010): 54-77; and “Oral Histories of Education and the Relevance of Theory: Claiming New spaces in a Post-Revisionist Era,” Special Issue: “Theory in Educational History,” History of Education Quarterly 51 (2011). Dr. Eicks research interests include: processes of integration post-desegregation, 1954-present; theory in educational history; immigrant students and youth involvement in social justice causes. She has recently developed a globalization and education course that incorporates an in-service trip to the Cameroon where teacher candidates help build a secondary school for girls under the auspices of Jacqueline Tchouassi, a Cameroonian native and founder of Aumazo, Inc., a non-profit organization whose goal is to develop educational opportunities for young women in rural Africa. Caroline is fluent in French, Croatian, and Spanish.
Table of Contents
PART I: THE DIVIDED GENERATION (1950-1969) * Memories of Class, Race, and Gender Divides: Immediate Pre and Post Desegregation Years * Cautiously Negotiating Social Divides: A Conservative Student Body * PART II: THE BORDER-CROSSING GENERATION (1970-1985) * Memories of Interracial Peer-Group Affiliations: Integration Years * Bridging Social Divides through Peer-Groups: A Socially Tolerant but Politically Inactive Student Body * PART III: THE RE-DIVIDED GENERATION (1986-2000) * Memories of Segregation by Class, Race, Nationality, and Religion: Destabilizing Years of Shifting Demographics * Self-Segregating in Opposition To: A Student Body Sensitized to Discrimination * Conclusion * Methodology: The Transparent Historian