Anthropology of Childhood, Youth & Education – (M.Sc.)

This MSc was the first degree of its kind in the world when it was established and is still unique in its thorough-going anthropological perspective on what it is to be a child or to be young. Its key organising principle is that understanding children requires the study of how their relations with others - peers, older and younger children, parents, teachers and other adults - inform their practices, identities and world views.

Course Aims
* Do children of `different cultures´ live `different worlds´?
* How does education impact upon children´s worlds, and upon social and cultural practices more broadly?
* How do everyday processes of learning - both formal and informal - help to shape children´s ideas of and engagement with society at large?
* What is the role of schools in the transmission and acquisition of cultural values to children and youth?
* And why are adults´ ideas about childhood and youth so important for what children learn and aspire to become?

This course addresses such issues from an anthropological perspective. The first of its kind in the UK, its distinctiveness derives from an anthropological approach that focuses on the importance of children´s and youth´s perspectives, and on the role that education (formal and informal) plays in children´s learning processes and in the transmission and acquisition of cultural knowledge. Through an examination of ethnographic cases from the around the world (including the UK), participants will learn about the different ways in which childhood and youth are understood and conceptualised, along with the different educational forms and processes through which cultural knowledge is transmitted and acquired, and how culture impacts upon these processes.