The class meets on Tuesdays, from 5:10 to 6:50 in Dodge Hall 453.

[where to look for the required and recommended readings]

I - Introduction: on (not) Defining Education.

•  Cremin, Lawrence "Public Education and the Education of the Public" Teachers College Record 77:1-12, 1975.

•  Varenne, Hervé Introduction and Chapter 1 of Educating in life: ethnographies of challenging new normals. Routledge (2019).

recommended:

II - Framework and issues: knowledge, ignorance, practice

•  Lareau, Annette Home advantage: Social class and parental intervention in elementary education. New York: The Falmer Press. 1989 (Chapters 1, 3, 4, 6, [9])

recommended:

•  Gundaker, Grey "Hidden Education among African Americans during Slavery."in Anthropological perspectives on education. Edited by H. Varenne and E. Gordon, 53-74. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press 2008 [2007]

•  Rancière, Jacques The ignorant school master. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1999 [1987] (Chapters 1, 2, 3)

recommended:

  • de Certeau, Michel The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1984 [1980]
  • Garfinkel, Harold Ethnomethodology's program Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 2002. (Chapter 6 on instructing)
  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice The prose of the world. Tr. by J. O'Neil . Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press 1973 [1969].
  • Ortega y Gasset, Jose "The difficulty of reading." Diogenes 7, 28:1-17. 1959
  • Plato Meno

•  Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1991. (Chapters 1, 2, 4)

•  Redfield, Robert The little community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1960 [1956] (Chapters 1, 2, 3)

recommended:

  • Arensberg, Conrad and Solon Kimball Culture and community. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. 1965
  • Lave and McDermott "Alienated (labor) learning"
  • Redfield, Robert The little community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1960 [1956] (Chapters 8, 10 as well as all the other chapters)

III - Topics and their settings

•  Gilmore, Perry Kisisi (our language); The story of Colin and Sadiki.Malden, MA: Blackwell. 2016 (particularly Chapters 1-3)

alternate ethnography (to be presented by Mako Miura):
Schieffelin, Bambi The Give and Take of Everyday Life: Language Socialization of Kaluli Children. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1990

recommended:

  • Mauss, Marcel "Techniques of the body." Economy and Society 2:70-88. 1973 [ 1934]
  • Ochs, Elinor Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language socialization in a Samoan village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1988
  • Miller, Peggy Amy, Wendy, and Beth: Learning Language in South Baltimore. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1982 (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4) • 

alternate ethnography (to be presented by Youtian Lee):
•  Heath, Shirley Brice Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1983 (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8)

recommended:

  • Philips, Susan The invisible culture: Communication in classroom and community on the Warm Springs Indian reservation. New York: Longman. 1983
  • Conklin, Harold "Bamboo literacy on Mindoro" Pacific Discovery 2:4-11.

IV - Schooling, inevitably

•  Mehan, Bud Learning lessons: Social organization in the classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1979

alternate ethnography (to be presented by TBA):

•     McDermott, Ray

• Tobin, Joseph, J. and David Y.H. Wu, Dana H. Davidson Preschool in three cultures: Japan, China, and the United States. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 1989

alternate ethnography (to be presented by TBA):
•  Fuller, C, J The renewal of the priesthood: Modernity and traditionalism in a South Indian temple Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2003 (chapters 1,2,3,4)

recommended:

  • Anderson-Levitt, Kathryn Teaching cultures: Knowledge for teaching first grade in France and the United States Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. 2002

•  Koyama, Jill Making failure pay: For-profit tutoring, high-stake testing, and public schools. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2010

alternate ethnography (to be presented by Léa Barouch):
•  Page, Reba Lower-track classrooms: A curricular and cultural perspective. New York: Teachers College Press. 1991

recommended:

  • Foucault, Michael Discipline and punish. Tr. by A. Sheridan. New York: Penguin Books. 1978 [1975]
  • Varenne (with Shelley Goldman and Rosemary Rizzo-Tolk) Chapters 4 and 5 of Varenne and McDermott Successful failure Boulder, CO: Westview. 1998

•  Moffatt, Michael Coming of age in New Jersey: College and American culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 1989

alternate ethnography (to be presented by Esther Fan):
•  Holland, Dorothy and Margaret Eisenhart Educated in romance: Women, achievement and college culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1990.

recommended:

  • Gershon, Ilana The Break-Up 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2010
  • Sabin, Portia Truths, universally acknowledged: Friendship and romance as education between college students in America Ph.D. dissertation. New York: Columbia University 2004

V - Education (before, after, beyond, beneath, around) schooling

•  Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1991. (Chapter 3)

• Oliveira, Gabrielle and Hervé Varenne "Mothers, educating themselves about their children's futures in Mexico and the United States" (Chapter 7 of Educating in life: ethnographies of challenging new normals. Routledge (2019).)

alternate ethnography (to be presented by Muyan Guo):
•  Jordan, Brigitte Birth in four cultures: A crosscultural investigation of childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden and the United States.  Second Edition.  Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

recommended:

•  Groce, Nora E. and John W. Whiting Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language.

alternate ethnography (to be presented by Caitlyn Kanemitsu):
• report on Juliette de Wolfe's Parents of children with autism: An ethnography. New York: Palgrave. 2014. (the dissertation on which this is based is available on line.

recommended:

•  Verrips, Jojada, and Birgit Meyer "Kwaku's car: The struggles and stories of a Ghanaian long-distance taxi-driver." in Car cultures. Edited by D. Miller, 153-184. New York: Berg 2001

•  Sammadar, Sunanda, and Hervé Varenne "To Not/Wear or to Not Not/Wear Hijab: The Girls and Boys of Bangladesh Avenue, in America" (Chapter 8 of Educating in life: ethnographies of challenging new normals. Routledge (2019).)

recommended:

  • Arora, Payal Dot Com mantra: Social computing in the Central Himalayas.  Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 2010
  • Kemble, Amanda, et al. How to be a cell phone repair technician. in A world of work. Edited by I. Gershon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 179-193. 2015

• Varenne, Hervé "Education, Cultural Production, and Figuring Out What to Do Next" in Companion to the Anthropology of Education. Edited by Mica Pollock and Bradley Levinson. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. (with the collaboration of J. Koyama). pp. 50-64

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