Rethinking Culture and Education

Overview & Synopsis

The author reviews three books that provide complementary and thought-provoking insights. The three books under review are: (1) "Reproducing class: education, neoliberalism, and the rise of the new middle class in Istanbul," by Henry J. Rutz and Erol M. Balkan; (2) "Technology, culture, family: influences on home life," by Elizabeth B. Silva; and (3) "Education and cultural citizenship," by Nick Stevenson. Across all three works, several themes appear that have long been central to the study of culture and education. The first is that education is a meta-discourse for reproducing social class. The second theme addresses how media, advertising, tests, and curricula structure the field of education, broadly defined. The third and fourth themes are also familiar ideas in studies of education: that which may be called training is distinct from embodied learning (to paraphrase Dewey 1930, 15); and embodied learning, not training and skilling, are crucial for building strong democracies. Since it is not possible to cover all of the common themes, the author highlights the ethnographic, empirical, and historical evidence the three books raise in support of their arguments, and he uses their findings to consider some of the ways these authors' observations and analyses inspire a rethinking of culture and education.