“The Children in Room E4” (Algonquin, 2007) chronicles a landmark civil-rights case and life in a classroom and neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut. The book is relevant to the education-themed courses Sociology of Education and Economics of Education being taught at Merrimack this semester by sociology’s Mike DeCesare and economics’ Zoe Sherman, respectively. Their students read and discussed the first section of the book in anticipation of Eaton’s talk.
Eaton is a nationally recognized expert on racial and economic inequality in public education. At the Sillerman Center, she and her colleagues engage funders and their advisers, socially concerned scholars and nonprofit practitioners to increase and enhance grantmaking to social-justice causes. She is also professor of the practice at the Heller School and an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
In addition to “The Children in Room E4,” Eaton is the author of “Integration Nation: Immigrants, Refugees and America at Its Best” (The New Press, 2016) and “The Other Boston Busing Story: What’s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line” (Yale, 2001). She is co-author, with Gary Orfield, of “Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education” (New Press, 1996).
Her appearance at Merrimack is sponsored by The Writers House, the department of sociology and the department of economics.
