Anthropology of Education

This course adopts an anthropological perspective on education to address the core question of how education operates within different cultural contexts. Focusing on themes such as childhood, labor, play, rites of passage, gender, and marginalized children, the course uses weekly literature reports, guided discussion questions, film screenings, and classroom dialogue to train students to employ cross-cultural comparison. Students learn to understand education not merely as the transmission of knowledge, but as a process through which cultural values, social norms, and identity are constructed. The course also helps students identify how globalization and capitalism reshape childhood experiences, patterns of consumption, and media environments, and analyzes how children and adolescents negotiate the self and identity between mainstream and subcultural worlds. The final assignment—designing a rite of passage that best supports the growth of one’s own students—encourages in-service teachers to translate theoretical insights into practical and implementable teaching plans. In doing so, the course strengthens cultural sensitivity, anti-stereotype educational practice, and understanding of marginalized situations, helping to build sustainable classroom actions and school-based support networks, while integrating respect for difference and public care into long-term professional practice.