In collaboration with the Teachers College Institute for Urban and Minority Education and the Center on History and Education, the Program in History and Education seeks to establish a scholarly community focused on investigating the history of education, broadly defined, in 20th century Harlem. All of the forces that shaped education in the 20th century U.S. ran through Harlem, often in amplified form because of the particular confluence of people, ideas, and institutions in this community. Nonetheless, Harlem remains understudied in the history of education.
By investigating the historical forms and meanings of education — in schools and beyond — in Harlem, we hope to support and provoke a rich vision of the place of education in communities and the reciprocal relationships between communities and schools. We will help explain why and how education has taken the forms that it has, by considering the roles of communities, students, teachers, policy makers, local and national leaders, and political and economic trends in shaping learning and schooling in local context.