The course overview states that by studying anthropology, we can learn alternative perspectives of who we are and why we do the things we do through the study of individuals, groups and institutions different from ourselves.  The professor's goal was for the students to realize that we look at education through our own experiencees and that we rarely stop and think about why we think the way we do about education.   We discussed the difficulty of making change in a system that we don't really look at. We did an exercise about staring at a toilet and writing about it from various points of view.  We thought that it was a silly activity at first but then we realized that the education system, like a toilet is something that we expect to work and really don't think about it until it breaks down.  David Tyacke's book Tinkering Toward Utopia came to mind many times during the course because of Tyacke's analogy of education being like grammar: we object to change and we fight change.  We are uncomfortable with changing something that we believe works just fine.

     We had two texts:  Schooling the Symbolic Animal (2000) by Bradley Levinson (ed) and Richard Rodriguez' autobiographical work Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982).  I can't believe that I have made it this far interested in bilingual education and language acquisition and had not read anything by Richard Rodriguez about preserving the home language.  It was an eye-opener and I highly recommend the book to anyone who needs a different lens for looking at bilingual education.  (Critique #1)

     The assignments in the class had to follow a format of description of the article, critique, linkage and extension. We had to synthesize as much as possible and submit no more than six pages per assignment.  It was an exercise in being concise, direct and informative. (Critique #2)

    Besides the papers, we had to do a group oral presentation on one of the articles in the Levinson book.  I chose an article about Keith Basso, an anthropologist at the University of New Mexico who writes about symbolism in the land and landscape for the Navajo. 

     The most valuable exercise we did was to write a brief educational ethnography.  We had to think of all the thousands of hours that we have spent as students in a classroom, which were the ones that remain with us?  We had to reflect on what we remembered and why. And then look at the implications on who we are today and who we are as teachers.  This exercise made me realize that I did not go to school to learn but rather to please and receive praise. That was quite an enlightenment!  (Educational Ethnography)

    I enjoyed the material from the course immensely and started buying more books on anthropology.  The first one I bought was Evelyn Jacob and Cathie Jordan's Minority Education: Anthropological Perspectives.  Based on that book and what I learned in class, I developed a Powerpoint presentation about how anthropology applies to education.  Anthropology of Education.