In Schoolishness, Susan D. Blum continues her journey as an anthropologist and educator. The author defines "schoolishness" as educational practices that emphasize packaged "learning," unimaginative teaching, uniformity, constant evaluation by others, arbitrary forms, predetermined time, and artificial boundaries, resulting in personal and educational alienation, dependence, and dread.

Drawing on critical, progressive, and feminist pedagogy in conversation with the anthropology of learning, and building on the insights of her two previous books Blum proposes less-schoolish ways of learning in ten dimensions, to lessen the mismatch between learning in school and learning in the wild. She asks, if learning is our human "superpower," why is it so difficult to accomplish in school? In every chapter Blum compares the fake learning of schoolishness with successful examples of authentic learning, including in her own courses, which she scrutinizes critically.

Schoolishness is not a pedagogical how-to book, but a theory-based phenomenology of institutional education. It has moral, psychological, and educational arguments against schoolishness that, as Blum notes, "rhymes with foolishness."

Susan D. Blum is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of I Love Learning; I Hate School, and My Word!, as well as the editor of Ungrading.

Blum offers a well-evidenced critique of "schoolishness," her term for the "unchangeable structures" in school systems that impede innovation, authenticity, and joy in learning. This text is an essential read for anyone interested in the state of education, teaching, and learning.

David Lancy, Utah State University:

This book is urgently needed. Schoolishness captures a moment in time in which wholesale change in pedagogy occurred almost overnight. In the analysis of higher education, it is extremely rare to find a work that is so deeply informed by the author's scholarly and teaching career.

Amy Weldon, Luther College:

Susan Blum is a friendly, funny, and wise conversation partner on how you can make your class better next Tuesday, next spring, and beyond by revitalizing your thinking about what you and your students are doing together in that space—physically and mentally, indoors or out.