Why Don't Anthropologists Care about Learning (or Education or School)? An Immodest Proposal for an Integrative Anthropology of Learning Whose Time Has Finally Come

Abstract

This article proposes a twenty-first-century anthropology of learning: comparative, integrating, powerful, speaking truth to power, and engaging in ethnographic, humanistic, and scientific investigation. Such an enterprise welcomes a wide variety of methods. An anthropology of learning includes-but distinguishes-education, socialization, enculturation, and schooling. It encompasses formal, informal, and nonformal learning. It grapples with definitions of learning and emphasizes that these are part of every human experience. Some learning happens in schools; only some of the learning matches what is explicitly intended. Sometimes learning is fostered by teaching, but pedagogy is not always required. Anthropology is an ideal discipline for investigating learning, education, and schooling-but these topics are not widely known in the field in general. The article proposes three centers of attention and provides an extended example, the "thirty-million-word gap." [learning, schooling, education, word gap] RESUMEN Este artículo propone una antropología del aprendizaje del siglo XXI: comparativa, integradora, y poderosa, que le habla la verdad al poder y comprometida con investigación etnográfica, humanística y científica.Tal iniciativa acoge una amplia variedad de métodos. Una antropología del aprendizaje incluye -pero distingueeducación, socialización, enculturación e instrucción. Abarca aprendizaje formal, informal y no formal. Confronta definiciones de aprendizaje y enfatiza queéstas son parte de cada experiencia humana. Algún aprendizaje ocurre en escuelas; sólo algún aprendizaje coincide con lo que está explícitamente diseñado. Algunas veces el aprendizaje se estimula con la enseñanza, pero la pedagogía no es siempre requerida. La antropología es una disciplina ideal para investigar sobre aprendizaje, educación e instrucción -pero estos tópicos no son ampliamente conocidos en el campo en general. Este artículo propone tres centros de atención y provee un ejemplo extendido, el "vacío de treinta millones de palabras." [aprendizaje, instrucción, educación, vacío de palabras] , ,

The Stuff of Contention and Care: Affective Materiality and Everyday Learning in Bristol, UK

“…As cities are increasingly preoccupied with initiatives and policies involving learning, education, and knowledge production, anthropology needs to engage in the debate on learning cities. As Blum (2019) argues, anthropology of learning is yet to wax. The learning city on the ground, demonstrated through practices in Bristol’s community centers, workshops, and campaigning about the city’s toxic heritage, has demonstrated that forces that trigger, push, and pull learning in the city are sometimes located outside formal educational milieus and policy initiatives.…”

“…Following Blum’s (2019) call for re‐engaging anthropological research with the study of learning, this article explores the everyday practices of learning in a city. The language of learning is becoming ubiquitous in planning offices and municipal institutions, as well as among policy makers, development consultants, and urban scholars (Campbell 2012; Longworth 2006).…”

Development of the health-preserving competence of a physical education teacher based on the knowledge about influenza and bronchitis prevention

“…The study used the following methods and approaches: the analysis of the scientific literature, innovative, competence [17,18], systemic, problem, morphological and functional, phenomenological, axiological [19], philosophical, anthropological [5,6,[19][20][21], ontological, epistemological, narrative, existential [4], temporal, synergetic [22,23], pathopedagogical [1,10], etiological (in health pedagogy) [1,10], propaedeutic (in health pedagogy), narrative, existential, psychological, preventive [1,10,24], transdisciplinary [25,26], hermeneutic [17] and inclusive [16].…”

Uncertain Times: Linguistic Anthropology in 2019

“…A classic topic in the study of interpellative forms of citizenship is schooling and other sites of formal and informal learning (on these terms, see Blum 2019). This last year has continued the tradition of powerful work on education and social inequality.…”

“…The word‐gap theory is based on a widely discredited and yet enormously influential study from the 1990s, which supposedly found that in the first three years of socialization, children from the lowest income families in the United States hear thirty million fewer words than those from higher income families and that this word gap explains cognitive and achievement differences. The continuing influence of this theory is Blum's (2019) example of the pressing need for better studies of how children and youth learn as part of a stronger anthropology of learning. Both Johnson (2019) and Arnold and Faudree (2019) suggest how we can speak about this debunked theory as part of claiming a more prominent role for our guild in public debates against such deficit models.…”