Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education
Beginning and advanced students alike will find much to learn from this rich and stimulating collection of essays. Written by many of the most articulate and visible scholars in the field, the twenty-four essays and five thematic chapters inSchooling the Symbolic Animalare testament to the vigor, diversity, and critical thinking of anthropological and sociological thought on education. (Amy Stambach)Schooling the Symbolic Animalis the definitive collection exploring the social and cultural foundations of education in pre-modern, modern and 'global' societies. (Mehan, Hugh)Nicely balances classics, many judiciously trimmed, with well chosen new pieces. . . . It promises no easy fixes for educational problems--just a way of seeing that can change everything students used to think about learning and schooling. (Anderson-Levitt, Kathryn)Often arresting and challenging . . . remarkable collection. . . . The editors develop an ingenious framework, flesh it out, and then place its pieces in a neat mosaic with clarifying introductions for each of the five sections. The articles offer a fresh look at the education of Americans. This collection is well-suited for advanced and graduate studets in education. (Choice)The editors develop an ingenious framework, flesh it out, and then place its pieces in a neat mosaic with clarifying introductions for each of the five sections. (R.O. UlinChoice)Extraordinarily stimulating and refreshing with its unique feature of bringing giants in the field of educational anthropology and sociology to dialogue with our contemporary scholars on issues that transcend time, disciplines, and national boundaries. This book offers one of the best introductions to the contributions of social science to the study of education. (Henry Trueba)Levinson and his coworkers have put together a useful and interesting book, consisting of a good sampling of what anthropologists interested in education have said, canted towards those who have said it in recognizable anthropological terms, and with some regard for the canons of anthropological discource. We can applaud this effort. (Anthropology & Education Quarterly)The selections are well chosen, including both older familiar articles and the work of contemporary scholars studying the problems of modernity, cultural change,a nd diversity. The essays of the editors are useful, tying the material into a comprehensive, unified book that should be welcome addition to courses in the sociology of education, and similar courses. (Contemporary Sociology)