Education, Anthropology, and Schoolishness with Susan Blum

In early 2023, Susan Blum came on Tomayto Tomahto to discuss linguistic anthropology. 2 years later, she's back to discuss her work on schoolishness, ungrading, and linguistic ideology. From plagiarism to authentic learning, imperialist language ideologies to biased methods and metrics of Western science, this episode looks critically at what we "know," how we know it, and where the perpetuation of knowledge might hinder new discoveries. Science promises objectivity, but does it deliver? How might anthropology promise subjectivity, deliver complexity, but ultimately nudge our cultural, psychology, and linguistic understandings toward objectivity?

We can be angry with students for cheating and we can lament the existence of AI for aiding and abetting—or we can ask: why are students cheating in the first place? Surely there’s something amiss with our education system that a substantial portion of students feel no intrinsic motivation to learn and therefore happily outsource their essays and projects, right? Combining questions of methods, results, epistemological orientations, and the political ramifications of research, this episode highlights the merits of an anthropological approach to learning, language, and inquiry.

Susan Blum's personal website; Notre Dame profile

Schoolishness: Alienated Education and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful

Unseen WEIRD Assumptions: The So-Called Language Gap Discourse and Ideologies of Language, Childhood, and Learning

John Warner: More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Asao Inoue: Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom, 2nd Edition

Contract Cheating

Émile Durkheim: Collective Effervescence

⁠Charles Briggs⁠

⁠William Labov ⁠