Nice White Parents (Serial, a New York Times Company, 2020) is a five-part podcast that looks at the 60-year relationship between white parents and New York City public schools; its tagline: “building a better school system, and what gets in the way.” One would be hard pressed to deny that schools don’t provide all children with the same educational experience. But when reporter Chana Joffe-Walt investigated these inequalities, she found that decades of reforms and initiatives focused on who schools were failing, not who schools were serving. In the podcast, Joffe-Walt turns her attention to what is arguably the most powerful force in our schools: white parents. In this course, we’ll discuss the series in depth and also engage in a webinar about an arts–focused method of teaching Mimetic Theory.
