Schoolishness w/ Dr. Susan Blum

Human Restoration Project

My guest today is Dr. Susan Blum. Susan Blum is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of I Love Learning; I Hate School and My Word!, as well as the editor of Ungrading.

Her new book, Schoolishness: Alienated Education, and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful Learning is now out on Cornell University Press. It catalogs in great detail the characteristics of a “schoolish” education, that is, school as a self-contained institution with its own logic, grammar, and rules. One that, ultimately, sets students up for difficult re-entry into the rest of their lives in an unschoolish world. Susan draws upon examples of unschoolish learning from around the world and makes a powerful case for a necessary anthropological perspective that makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar.

“If we don't try, nothing will change,” she writes, “It's hard. Hell, it's probably impossible. Schoolishness is probably here to stay, but maybe not all of its elements are inevitable. Entrenched, yes. But inevitable? I don't think so.”

Editor's Note: Susan would like to add a quick correction that her current DuoLingo streak is over 1,100 not 11,000. :)

Susan Blum's Website

Works mentioned this episode:

Susan Hrach - Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning

David Lancy - The Anthropology of Childhood

Edwin Hutchins - Cognition in the Wild

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