A01=Amy Binder
Activism
African Americans
Afrocentric education
Afrocentrism
Ali Mazrui
Atlanta Public Schools
Author_Amy Binder
Board of education
Brooklyn College
Case study
Category=JH
Category=JN
City College of New York
Classroom
Contentious politics
Creation science
Creationism
Criticism
Culture war
Curriculum
Darwinism
Diane Ravitch
District of Columbia Public Schools
Doug McAdam
Education
Education reform
Epperson v. Arkansas
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Eugenie Scott
Harvard University
Ideology
Institute for Creation Research
Institution
Kevin Padian
Legislature
Leonard Jeffries
Multiculturalism
Nathan Glazer
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Center for Science Education
Obstacle
Of Education
Opportunism
Oppression
Pedagogy
Political opportunity
Politics
Postmodernism
Protest
Public school (United Kingdom)
Racism
Rhetoric
School district
School of education
Science education
Scientific theory
Secondary education
Self-esteem
Separation of church and state
Sidney Tarrow
Skepticism
Social movement
Social movement theory
Social science
Social studies
Sociology
State school
Syllabus
Teacher
Textbook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thesis
University of California
Vista Unified School District
Product details
- ISBN 9780691117904
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 09 May 2004
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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This book compares two challenges made to American public school curricula in the 1980s and 1990s. It identifies striking similarities between proponents of Afrocentrism and creationism, accounts for their differential outcomes, and draws important conclusions for the study of culture, organizations, and social movements. Amy Binder gives a brief history of both movements and then describes how their challenges played out in seven school districts. Despite their very different constituencies--inner-city African American cultural essentialists and predominately white suburban Christian conservatives--Afrocentrists and creationists had much in common. Both made similar arguments about oppression and their children's well-being, both faced skepticism from educators about their factual claims, and both mounted their challenges through bureaucratic channels. In each case, challenged school systems were ultimately able to minimize or reject challengers' demands, but the process varied by case and type of challenge.
Binder finds that Afrocentrists were more successful in advancing their cause than were creationists because they appeared to offer a solution to the real problem of urban school failure, met with more administrative sympathy toward their complaints of historic exclusion, sought to alter lower-prestige curricula (history, not science), and faced opponents who lacked a legal remedy comparable to the rule of church-state separation invoked by creationism's opponents. Binder's analysis yields several lessons for social movements research, suggesting that researchers need to pay greater attention to how movements seek to influence bureaucratic decision making, often from within. It also demonstrates the benefits of examining discursive, structural, and institutional factors in concert.
Amy J. Binder is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California.
