The National Mind

AI Ethics and Usage Guidelines

The use of AI tools in this course is encouraged as a means of enhancing learning, critical thinking, and creativity. However, their use must be guided by intellectual integrity and academic responsibility. Students are expected to:

• Use AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot) as thinking partners, not answer generators.
• Disclose AI use in written assignments where relevant, especially if the tool helped shape structure, wording, or arguments.
• Avoid submitting AI-generated content without critical editing or personal contribution. Plagiarism policies apply to AI-generated work as they do to human sources.
• Engage in critical discussions on the limits, biases, and ethical dimensions of AI, especially in relation to education and knowledge production.

This course treats AI not as a shortcut, but as a topic of inquiry and a tool for reflective engagement.

Course Structure and Readings

Week 1 | April 16, 2025 | Introduction

We begin by mapping the goals and structure of the course and introducing key concepts: education, socialization, enculturation, and transmission. This session will be interactive—after the course overview, students will be invited to critically reflect on the syllabus: What seems missing, biased, or worth rethinking? Your suggestions for alternative or complementary readings are welcome and will help shape our learning journey.

Reading:

• The syllabus (please read carefully before class)

Week 2 | April 23, 2025 | The Origins of Social Cognition and Learning

We explore the evolutionary roots of human social thinking. How did early humans develop the capacity to understand others’ emotions, intentions, and beliefs? What distinguishes human sociality from that of other species? We’ll discuss language, symbolic thought, and the emergence of shared intentionality, alongside the cultural implications of storytelling as a mode of early enculturation.

Readings:

• Tomasello, Michael. A Natural History of Human Thinking, pp. 80-123. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.
• Le Guin, Ursula K. “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night; or Why Are We Huddling about the Campfire?” In Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places, 21–30. New York: Grove Press, 1989.

Key Questions:

• How might storytelling and language function as early tools of socialization?
• How does Le Guin’s literary-philosophical perspective complement or challenge evolutionary psychology?

Week 3 | April 30, 2025 | Learning Beyond the Human: Animal Cultures and Social Transmission

This week we broaden the lens to non-human animals. How do other species learn from one another, form social bonds, and transmit behaviors across generations? What can we learn about ourselves by studying chimpanzees, dolphins, or crows? We’ll examine the boundaries—and continuities—between human and animal cultures.

Readings:

• Andrews, Kristin. The Animal Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Animal Cognition, pp. 200-229. Second. London: Routledge, 2020.
• Laland, Kevin N. Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind, 31-49. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Key Questions:

• Where do we draw the line between instinct, imitation, and learning?
• How does human education evolve from shared evolutionary roots?

Week 4 | May 7, 2025 | Myths and Proto-Education: Storytelling and the Shaping of Culture

Before formal schooling, myths were key instruments of education and socialization. This week examines myths as vehicles for explaining the world, transmitting values, and shaping identity. We’ll consider the functions of myth across different societies and discuss how storytelling constructs gender roles, hierarchies, and worldviews. Le Guin’s insights from Week 2 will resonate here.

Readings:

• Maynes, Mary Jo, and Ann Waltner. The Family: A World History, pp. 14-29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, pp. 1-62 (Chapters 1-3). 2005.
• Plato. The Republic. Edited by G. R. F. Ferrari. Translated by Tom Griffith. pp. 220-226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Week 5 | May 14, 2025 | No Class

Week 6 | May 21, 2025 | Premodern Education: Global Histories and Cultural Logics

This week offers a comparative look at premodern education systems across the globe. How did societies in Asia, the Americas, and Oceania educate their young? What counted as “knowledge” or “virtue,” and how were these transmitted? We explore formal and informal systems, emphasizing the social functions of education and its relationship to power, identity, and gender.

Readings:

• Lawrence, Adrea. “Precolonial Indigenous Education in the Western Hemisphere and Pacific.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Education, edited by John L. Rury and Eileen H. Tamura, pp. 132–46. Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Schirokauer, Conrad. “Education in Premodern China and Japan.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Education, edited by John L. Rury and Eileen H. Tamura, pp. 114–31. Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Hsiung, Ping-Chen. A Tender Voyage: Children and Childhood in Late Imperial China, pp. 103-127. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Week 7 | May 28, 2025 | Modern Histories of Socialization and Education I: Nation-Building and Identity Formation

In earlier weeks, we explored how education historically emerged from community-based practices and informal systems of cultural transmission. In contrast, modern education is largely shaped by centralized, state-organized systems—closely tied to the rise of the nation-state.

This week, we examine how education became a key instrument of nation-building in the modern era. We’ll begin with the ideological foundations of national education through the work of Fichte, whose writings laid intellectual groundwork for nationalist schooling. We then turn to historical case studies—from 19th-century Greece and Canada—to see how formal and informal educational practices were mobilized to forge collective identities, cultural myths, and notions of citizenship.

Readings:

• Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. “On the Nature of the New Education in General.” In Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation, edited by Gregory Moore, pp. 22–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009 [1806].
• Zervas, Theodore G. Formal and Informal Education during the Rise of Greek Nationalism: Learning to Be Greek. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 63-87, 111-135. 2016.
• Galway, Elizabeth. From Nursery Rhymes to Nationhood: Children’s Literature and the Construction of Canadian Identity, pp. 115-144. London: Routledge, 2008.

Key Questions:

• How did the modern concept of “national education” emerge, and what distinguishes it from earlier forms of socialization?
• What roles did textbooks, literature, and informal educational tools play in constructing national identity?
• How do these cases reflect broader global patterns—and what makes them distinct?

Week 8 | June 4, 2025 | No class

Week 10 | June 18, 2025 | Modern Histories of Socialization and Education – 2: Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Nationalism

This week we turn to the global diffusion—and contestation—of modern education systems under colonial and postcolonial conditions. How were schools used to impose imperial control? How did colonized societies adapt, subvert, or reclaim educational spaces? We explore how education operated as a site of negotiation between religious and secular authorities, between imposed norms and local identities.

Our case studies—from West Africa to South Asia—show how education has served both as a tool of domination and a field of resistance. We will examine the interplay between missionary schooling, Islamic education, colonial policy, and emerging nationalist ideologies.

Readings:

• Brenner, Louis. “The Transformation of Muslim Schooling in Mali: The Madrasa as an Institution of Social and Religious Mediation.” In Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education, edited by Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, 199–223. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
• Gangopadhyay, Gargi. “‘Our Motherland’: Mapping an Identity in Bengali Children’s Literature.” In The Nation in Children’s Literature: Nations of Childhood, edited by Kit Kelen and Bjorn Sundmark, 139–57. New York: Routledge, 2012.
• Grindel, Susanne. “The End of Empire Colonial Heritage and the Politics of Memory in Britain.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 5, no. 1 (2013): 33–49.

Week 11 | June 25, 2025 | Education and (National) Enculturation: Norms, Values, and Everyday Nationalism

This week we zoom in on how educational institutions socialize individuals into national cultures—not only through curricula, but also through everyday affective practices, routines, and assumptions. We’ll explore how national values, civic behavior, and belonging are embedded in the daily life of schools and families, starting from early childhood.

This session highlights the “banal” but powerful forms of nationalism that operate through repetition, emotion, and embodiment. Gender, class, race, and ethnicity emerge as crucial mediators of how national identity is experienced and transmitted.

Readings:

• Delmotte, Florence, and Sophie Duchesne. “Banal Nationalism for Babies: The Early Transmission of National Habitus to Children in the Family.” In International Comparisons in Learning and Education: Eliasian Perspectives, edited by Norman Gabriel, 81–106. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2024.
• Millei, Zsuzsa. “Affective Practices of Everyday Nationalism in an Australian Preschool.” Children’s Geographies 19, no. 5 (2021): 526–38.
• Mannitz, Sabine. “Regimes of Discipline and Civil Conduct in Berlin and Paris.” In Civil Enculturation: Nation-State, School and Ethnic Difference in The Netherlands, Britain, Germany, and France, edited by Werner Schiffauer, Gerd Baumann, Riva Kastoryano, and Steven Vertovec, 164–209. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006.
• Miedema, Esther. “‘Let’s Move, Let’s Not Remain Stagnant’: Nationalism, Masculinism, and School-Based Education in Mozambique.” In Childhood and Nation: Interdisciplinary Engagements, edited by Zsuzsanna Millei and Robert Imre, 183–206. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Week 12 | July 2, 2025 | Education as a Problem

Education is often idealized as a solution—but this week, we interrogate its darker sides. How do schools reproduce structural inequalities, militarized values, or national myths that silence trauma and dissent? How do emotional regimes in schooling create zones of exclusion, shame, or wilful ignorance?

Drawing on cases from Turkey, Rwanda, and beyond, we’ll examine how education can normalize violence, suppress historical memory, and harden divisions. We’ll also reflect on the ethical challenges educators face in systems designed to discipline rather than emancipate.

Readings:

• Kancı, Tuba, and Ayşe Gül Altınay. “Educating Little Soldiers and Little Ayşes: Militarised and Gendered Citizenship in Turkish Textbooks.” Edited by Marie Carlson, Annika Rabo, and Fatma Gök. Swedish Research Institute – Transactions 18 (2007): 51–70.
• Zembylas, Michalinos. “Wilful Ignorance and the Emotional Regime of Schools.” British Journal of Educational Studies 65, no. 4 (2017): 499–515.
• King, Elisabeth. From Classrooms to Conflict in Rwanda, pp. 1 -10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013.