Fernwood Publishing (Halifax & Winnipeg )
Columbia University Press (New York)
Publication date: April 2013
ISBN: 9781552665480 (Paperback, 130 pages)

Page Contents

• Book Description
• Table of contents
• Endorsements
• Reviews
• Interview reviews
• Translations
• Related subjects
• Book tour

Book Description

An anthropological analysis of education, Wild Children-Domesticated Dreams is the first study to examine the root cause of contemporary pedagogical systems from a truly comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. Examining the ontological roots of education from this confluence of ethology and anthropology reveals that the very category “human” is a requirement of civilization contingent on domestication and submission to the structural violence at the root of civilized pedagogical practices. The book explains the problems of violence, bullying, and personality and other social “disorders”, which mar the very experience of childhood and parenthood on an unprecedented scale.

Table of contents

1 In the beginning . . .

2 The Ontological Roots of Education—An Indispensable Introduction

3 Do Children Dream of Civilized Love?: Civilization and Its Contents

Empathy, Co-operation and Mutual Aid from an Interspecies Perspective
Children Do Not Dream of Carrots and Sticks

4 On Objects, Love and Objectifications

On Love
On Things: Questions of Cost
On Things: The Question of Love, Hatred and Shame
On Things: The Question of Categorization and Interests
On Love: The Question of Sex
On Making Things: Questions of Respect
On Using Things: Questions of Trust and Respect
On Things: Questions of Mistrust
On Issues That Objectify: Trust in Institution
On the Study of Things: Phenomenology et al
Finally: On Love, Objects and Objectifications

5 On Modernism and Education: The Birth of Contemporary Domesticated Pedagogies

The Nature of Mind Destruction
On Learning and Love
What, When and How Do People Learn
Institutionalization of Habitus
Predicting the Future
The Industrial Habitus of Education
The Verdict

6 In the End and towards a Feral Future

7 Bibliography and Index

Endorsements

“[This book] is a monument to our sense and original thinking.”

— John Taylor Gatto, author of Weapons of Mass Instruction

“This book provides an extremely stimulating analysis of the divisions and debilities engineered upon kids. … Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams is a hugely important work!”

— John Zerzan, author of Running on Emptiness

Reviews

In McGill Journal of Education (Vol 49, #1, 2014) by Rosalind Hampton (full review HERE)

“Throughout my reading of the book I was reminded of Ashanti Alston’s (2011) observation that the desire to be free and to learn requires that we be daring with the material we read, knowing that what we read can indeed change our lives. Wild  Children  is  this  kind  of  challenging  material,  exposing  and  calling  into  question  assumptions  about  what  we  think  we  know  about  civilization,  education and ourselves”.

Book launch lecture

 View HERE

Interview review

Interviewed for MoreThought by Richard Capes, professor at Charles University, Prague, November 2015 (full interview HERE)

Related subjects

Anarchism;   Animal Studies;   Animal Rights;   Anthropology;   Childhood;   Culture & Society;  Education;   Ethology;   Geography;  Legal Studies;   Philosophy

Book tour

(full tour HERE)