This is the first in a series of notes to lectures for my class ITSF5016 "Anthropology of Education"

It is a truth universally acknowledged ...

We hold these truths to be self-evident ...

that ... Education


" takes a village!"

" never ends!"

(with thanks to Jane Austen who understood how to write about common sense, ironically.)

(with thanks to those who understand that common sense can be true, seriously)

For the most common sense, see an AI response to the question "what is education?"

(and perhaps a reason NOT to take a course which confirms the common sense...)

Short introduction

  1. On anthropology as a particular way to discipline one's ways of knowing
    1. A social science built on the affordances (possibilities and constraints) of a methodology:
    2. Ethnography as an inductive way to "figure out" what human beings can be like with each other. This is:
      1. an epistemological choice
      2. that allows for many different techniques for systematic observation
      3. designed to reveal something about the human condition so that better decisions can be made about what do to next.
  2. Ways of knowing about what? "education"?
    1. The anthropologist will ask at this point: where would I start?
    2. With a definition designed to restrict investigation?
    3. With a common sense of one's audiences that may then be challenged by observation?
  3. An anthropologist might then start from observing
    1. Columbia has something called a "School of Education" ("Teachers College")? What would it be about?
    2. A famous American philosopher (John Dewey) wrote a book about "Democracy and education"? What might it be about?
    3. American politicians often talk about "improving education." What might they be talking about?
  4. And then anthropologists would wonder what observations to make so that they could tell philosophers, policy makers, and everybody else what they might not hear from anyone else.
    1. note that this problem is one that a Lawrence Cremin, famous historian and president of Teachers College, posed himself as he embarked on his life work writing the history of "American education" and deciding that it would not be a history of "American schooling."
  5. My answer, inspired by Cremin and many others, is that we are to observe people when they deliberate with each other about what to do next when such deliberations have consequences for the foreseable future (teach a child a language, send the child to a school, .... decide how to start an adult life, ... deal with a loved one health)

What we are going to do, practically

  1. Outline of the course
  2. Requirements
  3. How to access the readings
  4. Special matters
    1. the web site
      1. ongoing updating
      2. links to further reading and explorations
    2. blog posts of relevance to "education", broadly defined

Longer introduction

To make it a better day for [any child] the first and perhaps only step is to turn away from her and to trust her to work with us while we examine what all others, including ourselves, are doing around her. (Varenne & Mcdermott, 1998: 217)
  1. The issues, more technically
    1. "practice" as what human beings as ethnographers can observe of human beings where human beings live
      1. bodies, together
        1. inter-acting, conversing, entangled
      2. in place
      3. and in time
    2. "community" as the set of other human beings that human beings never fail to get entangled with (and are necessary for them to be fully human)
    3. "transformation" of communities and selves as human beings entangle themselves with each other and their history (ecology as transformed by earlier entanglements)
    4. "culture" as a way of talking about the special properties of entanglements at the type of experience and observation
  2. Thus "Education"
    1. as the inevitable step
      1. within the production of entanglements,
      2. the resistance to entanglements,
      3. and thus the transformation of these entanglements
  3. Thus "Ethnography" as method to face the multiplicities of humanity
  4. Some negatives. Education, for me and in this course, is NOT about:
    1. learning as a necessary step in human development
      1. the debate between Chomsky (and any theories of cognitive structures) and Skinner (and any theories of an initial blank state on which local conditions write themselves) is irrelevant to the extent that it addresses only the (early) development of the individual rather than the production of the conditions as well as the transformation of these conditions
    2. learning as a functional requirement for life in society
      1. this course will address questions often classified as "socialization" or "enculturation" but it actually is a critique of this classification. I am less interested in the production of selves by society than by the production of society by "I"s"
        1. see Varenne"s development of G. H. Mead"s provocative pages on the distinction between "I" and "me" if you are puzzled by the last statement.
    3. schooling
      1. not "why Johnny can"t read" (looking to cognitive or social explanations to school failure)
      2. not "what "we" can do about Johnny not reading" (looking for new school related curricula, pedagogies, policies)

from "learning one's culture" to "being introduced to local, time bound, problematics"

Some questions in the context of this course.
  • are schools "settings" as well as "institutions"?
  • is a focus on "education" a consequence of the interest in "agency"?
  • is a focus on "education" a consequence of an interest in "structure"?
  • how are villages?
  • what is the relevance of the education one might get during a final illness, after a long life?
  • who gets educated during a final illness, after a long life?