"I Love Learning; I Hate School": An Anthropology of College

by Susan D. Blum

Overview

Frustrated by her students’ performance, her relationships with them, and her own daughter’s problems in school, Susan D. Blum, a professor of anthropology, set out to understand why her students found their educational experience at a top-tier institution so profoundly difficult and unsatisfying. Through her research and in conversations with her students, she discovered a troubling mismatch between the goals of the university and the needs of students.

In "I Love Learning; I Hate School," Blum tells two intertwined but inseparable stories: the results of her research into how students learn contrasted with the way conventional education works, and the personal narrative of how she herself was transformed by this understanding. Blum concludes that the dominant forms of higher education do not match the myriad forms of learning that help students—people in general—master meaningful and worthwhile skills and knowledge. 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. In this critique of higher education, infused with anthropological insights, Blum explains why so much is going wrong and offers suggestions for how to bring classroom learning more in line with appropriate forms of engagement. She challenges our system of education and argues for a "reintegration of learning with life."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501713484
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	04/30/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	360
Sales rank:	698,208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Susan D. Blum is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, also from Cornell, Lies That Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths, Portraits of "Primitives": Ordering Human Kinds in the Chinese Nation, the editor of Making Sense of Language: Readings in Culture and Communication (three editions), and coeditor of China Off Center: Mapping the Margins of the Middle Kingdom.

Table of Contents

Introduction: What the Good Student Did Not Know
Part I. Trouble in Paradise
1. Complaints: Crisis or Moral Panic?
2. The Myriad and Muddied Goals of College Part II. Schooling and Its Oddities
3. Seeing the Air: The Nature and Spread of Higher Education
4. Wagging the Dog: Learning for Schooling 5. "What Do I Have to Do to Get an A?": The Real Skinny on Grades
6. Campus Delights: Nonacademic Engagement and Responsibility

Part III. How and Why Humans Learn: Explaining the Mismatch
7. Beyond Cognition and Abstraction: Notes on Human Nature and Development
8. Learning in the Wild, Learning in the Cage
9. Motivation Comes in at Least Two Flavors, Intrinsic and Extrinsic
10. On Happiness, Flourishing, Well-Being, and Meaning Part IV. A Revolution in Learning
11. Both Sides Now of a Learning Revolution
Conclusion: Learning versus Schooling: A Professor's Reeducation
Appendix: A New Metaphor: Permaculture, or Twelve Principles of Human Cultivation

What People are Saying About This

Peter Demerath

Susan D. Blum wrote this vitally important book to understand the mismatch between learning, 'which students may love,' and schooling, 'which many students hate.' While so much of school and college is familiar to many of us, Blum uses anthropology's emphasis on holism and comparison to make it strange and interesting again. Extending beyond college campuses to consider all of mass schooling, 'I Love Learning; I Hate School' points out how many of the practices that are commonplace in today’s colleges and schools actually have a corrosive effect on student interest and engagement. It denaturalizes Western schooling to reveal its many 'oddities,’ including age segregation, decontextualized learning, an emphasis on grades, and the production of failure. Blum draws on research from anthropology, cognitive science, affective neuroscience, child psychology, and human development, as well as her own original research and classroom experimentation, to show how these practices are misaligned with ‘the way humans are’ and actually learn. Looking across cultural space and historical time, she examines the variety of ways humans have engaged in our primary adaptive advantage: learning. Observing that teaching itself is ‘very rare in the ethnographic record,’ Blum finds that people tend to learn in multimodal ways, when they have a need or desire to learn, by doing, by showing others, by being active, through observation, through play, through guided participation, and when there are genuine consequences. Importantly, motivation for learning is powerfully related to perceived relevance, sociality, and affective experience. All of this helps to explain, for example, why so many students today are more engaged with extracurricular activities than their academic work: because these activities are more tightly aligned with key human learning inclinations. ‘I Love Learning; I Hate School’ is a must-read for all who care about educational improvement and renewal. Moving beyond critique, Blum shows a way forward with practical ideas instructors at all levels can use to make their classrooms less school-like, and in Blum’s words, more ‘joyful, relevant, and humane.’

Cathy Small

'I Love Learning; I Hate School' is beautifully written. It addresses a shared set of educational dilemmas experienced both intellectually and viscerally by teachers and students in our current university system. Susan D. Blum’s work is innovative in its approach and stimulating in its insight into educational history, theory, and practice. This book offers a thoughtful, intimate slant on how to make sense of our lived experience as teachers and students.

David F. Lancy

Susan D. Blum has written the book the majority of college faculty would write if they only had her encyclopedic knowledge, deep insight, and courage.

Christine Finnan

In 'I Love Learning; I Hate School,' Susan D. Blum courageously achieves the goal of anthropologists who work in their own culture: she makes the familiar strange. She does so by painting a vivid portrait of learning in today's universities, a portrait that those of us who love university teaching know but are reluctant to admit—the system too often fails even our most capable students. Blum leads the reader on an intimate, often uncomfortable, journey, a journey that everyone associated with higher education should take.

Editorial Reviews

We should take very seriously the critique of higher education offered by Susan Blum; the book is excellent, and I highly recommend it. Blum does the profession a service by drawing our attention to the ways in which traditional educational structures put barriers in the way of our students and their learning. She has a powerful command of educational history and theory, and her insights and anecdotes rang true to me throughout the book.

Chronicle of Higher Education

As I read 'I Love Learning; I Hate School, ' I sprained my neck from nodding in vigorous agreement. The book casts an anthropological lens on education in general and higher education in particular, and the result is a catalog of many of the things that I believe ail us when it comes to teaching and learning.

--John Warner "Inside Higher Ed"

We should take very seriously the critique of higher education offered by Susan Blum; the book is excellent, and I highly recommend it. Blum does the profession a service by drawing our attention to the ways in which traditional educational structures put barriers in the way of our students and their learning. She has a powerful command of educational history and theory, and her insights and anecdotes rang true to me throughout the book.

-- "Chronicle of Higher Education"

From the Publisher

"Susan D. Blum wrote this vitally important book to understand the mismatch between learning, 'which students may love,' and schooling, 'which many students hate.' While so much of school and college is familiar to many of us, Blum uses anthropology's emphasis on holism and comparison to make it strange and interesting again. Extending beyond college campuses to consider all of mass schooling, 'I Love Learning; I Hate School' points out how many of the practices that are commonplace in today’s colleges and schools actually have a corrosive effect on student interest and engagement. It denaturalizes Western schooling to reveal its many 'oddities,’ including age segregation, decontextualized learning, an emphasis on grades, and the production of failure. Blum draws on research from anthropology, cognitive science, affective neuroscience, child psychology, and human development, as well as her own original research and classroom experimentation, to show how these practices are misaligned with ‘the way humans are’ and actually learn. Looking across cultural space and historical time, she examines the variety of ways humans have engaged in our primary adaptive advantage: learning. Observing that teaching itself is ‘very rare in the ethnographic record,’ Blum finds that people tend to learn in multimodal ways, when they have a need or desire to learn, by doing, by showing others, by being active, through observation, through play, through guided participation, and when there are genuine consequences. Importantly, motivation for learning is powerfully related to perceived relevance, sociality, and affective experience. All of this helps to explain, for example, why so many students today are more engaged with extracurricular activities than their academic work: because these activities are more tightly aligned with key human learning inclinations. ‘I Love Learning; I Hate School’ is a must-read for all who care about educational improvement and renewal. Moving beyond critique, Blum shows a way forward with practical ideas instructors at all levels can use to make their classrooms less school-like, and in Blum’s words, more ‘joyful, relevant, and humane.’"

Peter Demerath

"Susan D. Blum has written the book the majority of college faculty would write if they only had her encyclopedic knowledge, deep insight, and courage."

David F. Lancy

"In 'I Love Learning; I Hate School,' Susan D. Blum courageously achieves the goal of anthropologists who work in their own culture: she makes the familiar strange. She does so by painting a vivid portrait of learning in today's universities, a portrait that those of us who love university teaching know but are reluctant to admit—the system too often fails even our most capable students. Blum leads the reader on an intimate, often uncomfortable, journey, a journey that everyone associated with higher education should take."

Christine Finnan

"'I Love Learning; I Hate School' is beautifully written. It addresses a shared set of educational dilemmas experienced both intellectually and viscerally by teachers and students in our current university system. Susan D. Blum’s work is innovative in its approach and stimulating in its insight into educational history, theory, and practice. This book offers a thoughtful, intimate slant on how to make sense of our lived experience as teachers and students."

Cathy Small

As I read 'I Love Learning; I Hate School,' I sprained my neck from nodding in vigorous agreement. The book casts an anthropological lens on education in general and higher education in particular, and the result is a catalog of many of the things that I believe ail us when it comes to teaching and learning.

Inside Higher Ed - John Warner