Interrogating the “Goodness” Of the “Good School” By Analyzing the Curriculum of White Ignorance

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Curricular Inquiries in Precarious Times: Student Agency, Transformations, and Place

Abstract

This study seeks to “unforget” the history of white educational resource hoarding in one Massachusetts town. In so doing, I illuminate how this town and its well-reputed schools produce and teach a curriculum of white ignorance, which allows town and school leadership, past and present, to uphold white supremacy while describing the town and its schools as “good.” Using critical race methodology to analyze historical documents, interviews with town leaders and residents, including Students and Families of Color who have been directly harmed by the curriculum of white ignorance,I find that the curriculum of white ignorance is produced through the discourse of town and school leadership, and must be disrupted for the schools to achieve their stated equity goal.

Author

• Briana Markoff, University of Maine at Farmington