While most aspiring grade-school teachers might choose to concentrate in subjects such as math, history, or science, one university is now offering students the option of specializing in anti-racism.
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte is currently offering a concentration of “Anti-Racism In Urban Education” for students pursuing master’s degrees in elementary education. According to the program website, students take 12 credit hours of courses focused on various topics related to racism in education.
Recommended Stories
While the program claims to focus on topics such as anti-racism activism and improving educational opportunities for urban students, a significant portion of the courses appear to be devoted to themes of “white-supremacist ideologies,” “unconscious racial bias,” and “awareness of privilege.”
Included among the courses students are required take is “Race in Education and Schooling,” a three-credit course that explains the various ways in which racism exists in the urban education system. Throughout the course, students will analyze “schooling and education from a historical, sociological, political, economic, and contemporary perspective with institutional racism at the center,” enabling them to “understand how these (urban) schools were formed based on White supremacist ideologies.”
Another required course, “History and Psychology of Racism,” ensures students understand how racism persists in society through systems of “power and privilege.” The same course investigates the “notion of Whiteness as normative” through various research methodologies. According to the course description, students are instructed on “various notions of race and racist beliefs and practices exist in the U.S.,” through multiple perspectives, including politics.
According to the program’s website, in-state residents will need to shell out roughly $3,000 to pay for all of the required courses, while out-of-state students will pay over $10,000 in order to fulfill all of the requirements.
