Anthropologist Susan Blum talks with Karen Christensen about how she came to question today’s educational practices and discusses her newest book Schoolishness: Alienated Education and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful Learning. Her study of Chinese social values led her to explore what we mean by cleverness and originality. She then began to question the nature of education itself, and its role in students’ lives, which took her to critical, progressive, and feminist pedagogy and the anthropology of learning. The conversation also goes into alternative education, global variation, the role of parents, and the use of online tools and smart phones in the classroom.

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