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Books by Susan D Blum
In Schoolishness, Susan D. Blum continues her journey as an anthropologist and educator. The auth... more In Schoolishness, Susan D. Blum continues her journey as an anthropologist and educator. The author defines "schoolishness" as educational practices that emphasize packaged "learning," unimaginative teaching, uniformity, constant evaluation by others, arbitrary forms, predetermined time, and artificial boundaries, resulting in personal and educational alienation, dependence, and dread.
Drawing on critical, progressive, and feminist pedagogy in conversation with the anthropology of learning, and building on the insights of her two previous books Blum proposes less-schoolish ways of learning in ten dimensions, to lessen the mismatch between learning in school and learning in the wild. She asks, if learning is our human "superpower," why is it so difficult to accomplish in school? In every chapter Blum compares the fake learning of schoolishness with successful examples of authentic learning, including in her own courses, which she scrutinizes critically.
Schoolishness is not a pedagogical how-to book, but a theory-based phenomenology of institutional education. It has moral, psychological, and educational arguments against schoolishness that, as Blum notes, "rhymes with foolishness."
In Schoolishness, Susan D. Blum continues her journey as an anthropologist and educator. The auth... more In Schoolishness, Susan D. Blum continues her journey as an anthropologist and educator. The author defines "schoolishness" as educational practices that emphasize packaged "learning," unimaginative teaching, uniformity, constant evaluation by others, arbitrary forms, predetermined time, and artificial boundaries, resulting in personal and educational alienation, dependence, and dread.
Drawing on critical, progressive, and feminist pedagogy in conversation with the anthropology of learning, and building on the insights of her two previous books Blum proposes less-schoolish ways of learning in ten dimensions, to lessen the mismatch between learning in school and learning in the wild. She asks, if learning is our human "superpower," why is it so difficult to accomplish in school? In every chapter Blum compares the fake learning of schoolishness with successful examples of authentic learning, including in her own courses, which she scrutinizes critically.
Schoolishness is not a pedagogical how-to book, but a theory-based phenomenology of institutional education. It has moral, psychological, and educational arguments against schoolishness that, as Blum notes, "rhymes with foolishness."
The moment is right for critical reflection on what has been assumed to be a core part of schooli... more The moment is right for critical reflection on what has been assumed to be a core part of schooling. In Ungrading, fifteen educators write about their diverse experiences going gradeless. Some contributors are new to the practice and some have been engaging in it for decades. Some are in humanities and social sciences, some in STEM fields. Some are in higher education, but some are the K–12 pioneers who led the way. Based on rigorous and replicated research, this is the first book to show why and how faculty who wish to focus on learning, rather than sorting or judging, might proceed. It includes honest reflection on what makes ungrading challenging, and testimonials about what makes it transformative.
This edited volume is to be published in December 2020 Table of Contents: Foreword Alfie ... more This edited volume is to be published in December 2020
Table of Contents:
Foreword Alfie Kohn
Introduction Why Ungrade? Why Grade? Susan D. Blum
Part I FOUNDATIONS AND MODELS
1 How to Ungrade Jesse Stommel
2 What Going Gradeless Taught Me About Doing the ‘Actual Work’ Aaron Blackwelder
3 Just One Change (Just Kidding): Ungrading and Its Necessary Accompaniments Susan D. Blum
4 Shifting the Grading Mindset Starr Sackstein
5 Grades Stifle Student Learning. Can We Learn to Teach Without Grades? Arthur Chiaravalli
Part II PRACTICES
6 Let’s Talk about Grading Laura Gibbs
7 Contract Grading and Peer Review Christina Katopodis and Cathy N. Davidson
8 Critique-Driven Learning and Assessment Christopher Riesbeck
9 A STEM Ungrading Case Study: A Reflection on First-time Implementation in Organic Chemistry II Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh
10 The Point-less Classroom: A Math Teacher’s Ironic Choice in Not Calculating Grades Gary Chu
Part III REFLECTIONS
11 Grade Anarchy in the Philosophy Classroom Marcus Schultz-Bergin
12 Conference Musings and The G Word Joy Kirr
13 Wile E. Coyote, the Hero of Ungrading John Warner
Conclusion Not Simple But Essential Susan D Blum
“I Love Learning; I Hate School”: An Anthropology of College is the account of a decade of obsess... more “I Love Learning; I Hate School”: An Anthropology of College is the account of a decade of obsession, research, and reading on the part of an experienced college professor, in an attempt to address the question: Why don’t students care about the academic part of school?
The central point—derived from ethnographic research, comparative academic reading, and my own twenty-five-years’ experience as a professor as well as my life as a student and a parent—is that the dominant forms of higher education do not match the myriad forms of learning that help students master meaningful and worthwhile skills and knowledge. Our students are capable of learning huge amounts, but the ways higher education is structured often leads them to fail to learn. More than that, it leads to ill effects.
I present a critique of higher education; then I explain why so much is going wrong; finally I offer some suggestions for how to bring classroom learning more in line with appropriate forms of engagement, given the flawed foundation of institutional schooling.
There are really two intertwined but inseparable stories here: an anthropological account of how humans learn and how this contrasts with the conventional ways schooling works, and the personal account of how the author was transformed by this understanding.
The story is this: I used to believe completely in the value of academic learning and especially in its forms in higher education, but I was frequently frustrated by my students’ failure to appreciate the life of the mind. Then I began to learn more about how people learn and about how school works, making clear the mismatch between the structures of universities and the human beings spending time and money in those structures. Now I am no longer frustrated with the students—but I am much more frustrated by the structures.
The book is anthropological in that it takes a broad look at the nature of humans across time and space to understand learning.
Papers by Susan D Blum
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Jul 28, 2015
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Feb 5, 2011
Other Education, 2022
Experiential learning in internships, a High-Impact Practice promoted in U.S. higher education, r... more Experiential learning in internships, a High-Impact Practice promoted in U.S. higher education, resembles "learning in the wild." This mixed-method study, conducted by a faculty-student ethnographic team, presents the qualities of the experience, in Dewey's terms, of a highly regarded community-based summer internship, with problem-led flexibility; bodily involvement and multimodality; respect for learners' capacities; mentors rather than teachers; multiple forms of diversity in a community of practice; cooperative social relations; genuine responsibility; security of basic needs; connection to community and place; ample but authentic time constraints.
In Schoolishness, Susan D. Blum continues her journey as an anthropologist and educator. The auth... more In Schoolishness, Susan D. Blum continues her journey as an anthropologist and educator. The author defines "schoolishness" as educational practices that emphasize packaged "learning," unimaginative teaching, uniformity, constant evaluation by others, arbitrary forms, predetermined time, and artificial boundaries, resulting in personal and educational alienation, dependence, and dread.
Drawing on critical, progressive, and feminist pedagogy in conversation with the anthropology of learning, and building on the insights of her two previous books Blum proposes less-schoolish ways of learning in ten dimensions, to lessen the mismatch between learning in school and learning in the wild. She asks, if learning is our human "superpower," why is it so difficult to accomplish in school? In every chapter Blum compares the fake learning of schoolishness with successful examples of authentic learning, including in her own courses, which she scrutinizes critically.
Schoolishness is not a pedagogical how-to book, but a theory-based phenomenology of institutional education. It has moral, psychological, and educational arguments against schoolishness that, as Blum notes, "rhymes with foolishness."
In Schoolishness, Susan D. Blum continues her journey as an anthropologist and educator. The auth... more In Schoolishness, Susan D. Blum continues her journey as an anthropologist and educator. The author defines "schoolishness" as educational practices that emphasize packaged "learning," unimaginative teaching, uniformity, constant evaluation by others, arbitrary forms, predetermined time, and artificial boundaries, resulting in personal and educational alienation, dependence, and dread.
Drawing on critical, progressive, and feminist pedagogy in conversation with the anthropology of learning, and building on the insights of her two previous books Blum proposes less-schoolish ways of learning in ten dimensions, to lessen the mismatch between learning in school and learning in the wild. She asks, if learning is our human "superpower," why is it so difficult to accomplish in school? In every chapter Blum compares the fake learning of schoolishness with successful examples of authentic learning, including in her own courses, which she scrutinizes critically.
Schoolishness is not a pedagogical how-to book, but a theory-based phenomenology of institutional education. It has moral, psychological, and educational arguments against schoolishness that, as Blum notes, "rhymes with foolishness."
The moment is right for critical reflection on what has been assumed to be a core part of schooli... more The moment is right for critical reflection on what has been assumed to be a core part of schooling. In Ungrading, fifteen educators write about their diverse experiences going gradeless. Some contributors are new to the practice and some have been engaging in it for decades. Some are in humanities and social sciences, some in STEM fields. Some are in higher education, but some are the K–12 pioneers who led the way. Based on rigorous and replicated research, this is the first book to show why and how faculty who wish to focus on learning, rather than sorting or judging, might proceed. It includes honest reflection on what makes ungrading challenging, and testimonials about what makes it transformative.
This edited volume is to be published in December 2020 Table of Contents: Foreword Alfie ... more This edited volume is to be published in December 2020
Table of Contents:
Foreword Alfie Kohn
Introduction Why Ungrade? Why Grade? Susan D. Blum
Part I FOUNDATIONS AND MODELS
1 How to Ungrade Jesse Stommel
2 What Going Gradeless Taught Me About Doing the ‘Actual Work’ Aaron Blackwelder
3 Just One Change (Just Kidding): Ungrading and Its Necessary Accompaniments Susan D. Blum
4 Shifting the Grading Mindset Starr Sackstein
5 Grades Stifle Student Learning. Can We Learn to Teach Without Grades? Arthur Chiaravalli
Part II PRACTICES
6 Let’s Talk about Grading Laura Gibbs
7 Contract Grading and Peer Review Christina Katopodis and Cathy N. Davidson
8 Critique-Driven Learning and Assessment Christopher Riesbeck
9 A STEM Ungrading Case Study: A Reflection on First-time Implementation in Organic Chemistry II Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh
10 The Point-less Classroom: A Math Teacher’s Ironic Choice in Not Calculating Grades Gary Chu
Part III REFLECTIONS
11 Grade Anarchy in the Philosophy Classroom Marcus Schultz-Bergin
12 Conference Musings and The G Word Joy Kirr
13 Wile E. Coyote, the Hero of Ungrading John Warner
Conclusion Not Simple But Essential Susan D Blum
“I Love Learning; I Hate School”: An Anthropology of College is the account of a decade of obsess... more “I Love Learning; I Hate School”: An Anthropology of College is the account of a decade of obsession, research, and reading on the part of an experienced college professor, in an attempt to address the question: Why don’t students care about the academic part of school?
The central point—derived from ethnographic research, comparative academic reading, and my own twenty-five-years’ experience as a professor as well as my life as a student and a parent—is that the dominant forms of higher education do not match the myriad forms of learning that help students master meaningful and worthwhile skills and knowledge. Our students are capable of learning huge amounts, but the ways higher education is structured often leads them to fail to learn. More than that, it leads to ill effects.
I present a critique of higher education; then I explain why so much is going wrong; finally I offer some suggestions for how to bring classroom learning more in line with appropriate forms of engagement, given the flawed foundation of institutional schooling.
There are really two intertwined but inseparable stories here: an anthropological account of how humans learn and how this contrasts with the conventional ways schooling works, and the personal account of how the author was transformed by this understanding.
The story is this: I used to believe completely in the value of academic learning and especially in its forms in higher education, but I was frequently frustrated by my students’ failure to appreciate the life of the mind. Then I began to learn more about how people learn and about how school works, making clear the mismatch between the structures of universities and the human beings spending time and money in those structures. Now I am no longer frustrated with the students—but I am much more frustrated by the structures.
The book is anthropological in that it takes a broad look at the nature of humans across time and space to understand learning.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Jul 28, 2015
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Feb 5, 2011
Other Education, 2022
Experiential learning in internships, a High-Impact Practice promoted in U.S. higher education, r... more Experiential learning in internships, a High-Impact Practice promoted in U.S. higher education, resembles "learning in the wild." This mixed-method study, conducted by a faculty-student ethnographic team, presents the qualities of the experience, in Dewey's terms, of a highly regarded community-based summer internship, with problem-led flexibility; bodily involvement and multimodality; respect for learners' capacities; mentors rather than teachers; multiple forms of diversity in a community of practice; cooperative social relations; genuine responsibility; security of basic needs; connection to community and place; ample but authentic time constraints.
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One especially illuminating aspect of a sign, according to contemporary linguistic anthropologist... more One especially illuminating aspect of a sign, according to contemporary linguistic anthropologists, is its indexical nature: signs gain meaning through logical or proximate association. And indexicality itself is multiple. In any given instance the potential associations are infinite but the actual associations are limited by a variety of perhaps contingent factors, discoverable not in advance but only through investigation. In demonstrating the multiple aspects (orders [Silverstein 2003], types [Ochs 1992], levels [Hanks 1992]) of indexicality of local food, I show that it indexes all at once location, contact, proximity, and multiple qualities (Chumley and Harkness 2013). As advertisers and others know (Luntz 2007, Puntoni, Schroeder, and Ritson 2010), the more positive associations that can be bundled into a single term, the more effective it can be. While only some advocates of local food would regard themselves as advertisers, virtually all see their task as promotion or educat...
American Anthropologist, 2019
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2019
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Food and language have been intertwined across human evolution via hand and tongue and throat and... more Food and language have been intertwined across human evolution via hand and tongue and throat and brain, hunting prayer and kitchen chatter, dinner discourse and labeling legislation. Thus, it should come as no surprise that they have been studied simultaneously in many contexts by anthropologists, linguists, philosophers, historians, and others. And varying approaches to these co-occurences have been developed: how food is structured like language, how food activities are organized by language use, and how food ideologies are carried through language. However, never have these various threads of co-occurrence and interplay been explicitly theorized together.
This thesis explores some of the factors determinant of Chuang Tzu’s particular linguistic choice... more This thesis explores some of the factors determinant of Chuang Tzu’s particular linguistic choices, especially the frequent appearance of terms and images concerned with the property of kinesis, which I define here as ‘the fact of movement or its characteristics’; I include as well sources of motion such as animals or organs of motion. This thesis demonstrates that Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi) uses words and images that exemplify acceptance of chaos and rejection of rigidity, in clusters of images concerned with motion, and that there is resonance between the very words chosen and Chuang Tzu’s philosophical and historical situation. I show that in its advocacy of recognizing a continuum between the spiritual and material worlds Chuang Tzu may be viewed largely as a conservative, regionally specific, response to the increasingly secular world of the late Warring States period. [NOTE: This is an uncorrected copy of my MA thesis.]
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2019
Cathy N. Davidson has been writing about her experiments in education for years (for example here... more Cathy N. Davidson has been writing about her experiments in education for years (for example here and here and here). She brings to her new book deep understanding of the context, history, successes, and shortcomings of the dominant forms of higher education--college--and highlights several dozen approaches that are more successful. These are more appropriate, she argues, than the conventional forms, which have not changed in more than a hundred years, because they respect students’ abilities, teach them to employ the affordances of not only technology but also other people, and anticipate that the content of whatever they do in college will have only limited relevance in the future--so they need to focus on learning to learn. Conventional colleges have outlived their initial purposes, which were to train managers in a newly industrializing and urbanizing society, when books were scarce and simply ingesting information was challenging enough. They selected only top students and churned them through a disciplinary mill, certified by authorities.
That’s not what we need now.
Information is hardly rare. We need, rather, to teach students--all people--to find it, evaluate it, use it, as they ask real questions and prepare for an ever-changing career and cultural landscape. Davidson rejects the idea of a simple vocational focus for higher education, because no matter how quickly students will find a first job if they have narrow skills training, it is almost certain that this will not be their only job. So the purpose of higher education has to be to prepare them for flexibility.
Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 2007
American Ethnologist, Jan 1, 1999
Philosophy East and West, Jan 1, 1997
China Review International, Jan 1, 2002
David Faure and Tao Tao Liu, Editors. Town and Country in China: Identity and Perception. by Susa... more David Faure and Tao Tao Liu, Editors. Town and Country in China: Identity and Perception. by Susan D. Blum Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2002. ix, 260 pp. Hardcover $65.00, ISBN 0-333-94595-6. In 1977 G. William Skinner publishe.
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Jan 1, 1996
Language in Society, Jan 1, 1999
Page 1. REVIEWS ALESSANDRO DURANTI, Linguistic anthropology. (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics.... more Page 1. REVIEWS ALESSANDRO DURANTI, Linguistic anthropology. (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics.) Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xxi, 398. Hb 59.95,pb59.95, pb 59.95,pb19.95. Reviewed by JOSEPH ...
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Jan 1, 2011
... in Mumbai, the Tata Institute for Social Sciences, Mumbai University, SNDT University and the... more ... in Mumbai, the Tata Institute for Social Sciences, Mumbai University, SNDT University and their libraries, and the Marathi Grantha Sangrahalay, Denzil Saldanha, Sharit Bhowmik, Ramesh Kamble, YD Phadke, Satish Kulkarni, Sulochana, Arun Khopkar, Chandrakant Joshi ...
China Review International, Jan 1, 2003
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Jan 1, 2010
Language in Society, Jan 1, 1999
Page 1. SUSAN D. BLUM than much conversation-analytic work; and while overtly ethnographic in its... more Page 1. SUSAN D. BLUM than much conversation-analytic work; and while overtly ethnographic in its sub-stance, it presupposes less collateral disciplinary knowledge than Moerman's essay (1988) in this difficult, important area. ...
China Review International, Jan 1, 2005
The Journal of Asian Studies, Jan 1, 1995
Pacific Affairs, Jan 1, 2004
American Anthropologist, 2013
Language in Society, 1999
ABSTRACT This unusual and ambitious book attempts to define a field both more narrow and more bro... more ABSTRACT This unusual and ambitious book attempts to define a field both more narrow and more broad-ranging than linguistic anthropology: the field of “language and culture studies.” Like a number of other recent works, including Duranti 1997, Bonvillain 1997, Salzmann 1998, and even the edited volume of Brenneis & Macaulay 1996, this book is intended to introduce an often misunderstood field to a new generation of students. Each of these books begins with a discussion of how to title the field (anthropological linguistics? linguistic anthropology?) and how to justify the material included and excluded. While acknowledging kinship with sociolinguistics, formal linguistics, ethnography of speaking or ethnolinguistics, discourse analysis, and cultural studies, each book mentions studies belonging to these subfields but does not situate them at the center. The basic issue appears to be what these authors regard as fundamental questions; to fall within linguistic anthropology, the questions have to be anthropological. In other words, the aim is usually to uncover some aspect of a society through close examination of its language. Studies of language for its own sake might be interesting, important, even essential; but these tend not to be the focal issue in the works mentioned above.
The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2013
American Anthropologist, 2015
Pedagogies of Care, 2020
Why not try something new in unprecedented times?
Here is a video put together by 21 students who took my 5-day seminar, The Culture of College, th... more Here is a video put together by 21 students who took my 5-day seminar, The Culture of College, through the Oklahoma Scholar-Leadership Enrichment Program.
The authors were
Sara Alexander, Mark Barber, Gabby Beasley, Sage Becker, Amanda Botts, Megan Buchanan, Susana Castillas-Brizuela, Alejandro Castillo, Abigail Clarke, Shaylin Daji, Kylie Hagerdon, Zakiya Harris, Dante Huerta, Jana Johnson, Melissa Martin, Hattie Peacock, Sarah Power, Brian Roberts, Takenari Tienabeso, Brittney Williams, Stephanie Zachery