Ingold has in recent years been interested in the interface between education and learning as a practice explored in books like Making (2013) and The Life of Lines (2015). He has directed the project ‘Knowing From the Inside: Anthropology, Art, Architecture and Design’ (2013-18), with funding from the European Research Council, which specifically target educational issues.

He is editor of the recent anthology Knowing From the Inside: Cross-Disciplinary Experiments with Matters of Pedagogy from 2022 and Anthropology and/as Education and Anthropology: Why it Matters, published in 2018.

Abstract:
Societies institutionally committed to the advance of science and civilisation regard education, first and foremost, as an engine of progress. It allows each generation to stand on the shoulders of its predecessors. The promise of education lies principally in its cultivation of arts of the intellect which, in their operation, are entirely indifferent to variations of human experience – or at best, treat these variations as material for analysis. Yet this regime of progressive education, wedded to a meritocratic conception of citizenship, has generated unsustainable inequalities in the distribution of reward and undermined the democratic commitment to the common good. To heal the rift between democracy and education means placing response-ability and sensitivity to difference before rationality and standardised measures of attainment, allowing generations, once again, to work together in producing a future for all.