Contentious Curricula

Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools

Amy Binder

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English

Princeton University Press
19 July 2004

Sociology & anthropology; Education

Series: Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology

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.

By: Amy Binder
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Volume: 20
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 425g
ISBN: 9780691117904
ISBN 10: 069111790X
Series: Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 19 July 2004
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Amy J. Binder is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California.

Reviews for Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools

[A] provocative and engaging book... As different as the two movements and their constituents were, Binder astutely shows that both used the rhetoric of pluralism, among other shared tactics, to make their cases. Teacher A useful addition to the corpus of social movement studies. Amy Binder presents a valuable analysis of attempts to change an institution. -- Joseph R. Gusfield Contemporary Sociology Definitely worth reading, both as a good introduction to the literature on social movements and to what such analyses can bring to scholarship on the politics of educational reforms. It also has significant things to say both to those of us who are concerned about how the extension of democracy can function in paradoxical ways in education and to those readers who have a commitment to understanding the complexities of cultural pluralism and multiculturalism. -- Michael Apple Educational Policy Binder carefully considers the scholarly literature of social movements and makes a contribution to it by examining social movements focusing on the impact of these movements on subnational governmental units. Choice

Winner of American Sociological Association Culture Section Distinguished Book Award 2002
Winner of American Sociological Association Culture Section Distinguished Book Award 2002.
Winner of American Sociological Association Culture Section Distinguished Book Award 2003.
Winner of Best Book Award, Culture Section, American Sociological Association. 2003 (United States)
Winner of Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Pacific Sociological Association 2002 (United States)
Winner of Outstanding Book Award of the American Educational Research Association 2004 (United States)