To fulfill this Perspectives requirement of the Civitae curriculum, I took SOCL 320: Sociology of Education with Dr. Lee Bidwell.

Throughout the semester, our main focus was exploring the factors that contribute to educational inequalities in the American public education system. We began the course by exploring the foundations of public education: history, theories, and research methods; from there, we explored the structure and professional demands of education from the professional standpoint. After laying the foundation, we dove into race, socioeconomic status, and the achievement gap as factors of inequality in public education.

To tie the semester up, our class composed a collaborative annotated bibliography of articles and journals presenting research and resolutions for the inequalities in American public education.

I definitely valued and enjoyed the class content and discussions from SOCL320. Although the course centers on issues in education, my peers represented various majors and programs that deviated from the field of education (Communication Studies, Sociology, etc.), which made our class discussions even more interesting as we heard from students from various backgrounds. Most of the basic, factual content I had learned before in previous classes (for example, this curriculum aligned/overlapped slightly with some content from EDUC 261) but I enjoyed being able to apply and analyze them to bigger, current issues and trends in education. I definitely feel as though I grasped a better, deeper understanding of issues and inequalities in education, as well as research methods and basic social theories.