On the Future of Anthropology in Schools of Education

Position Statement

The first course in anthropology at Teachers College may have been taught in 1935 by Lyman Bryson.  By the late 1940s Margaret Mead started a long association that lasted until the time of her death.  She taught one or two classes a year, sponsored dissertations and was instrumental in the formal institutionalization of the discipline when, in the 1960s, the College reorganized its foundation division along disciplinary liness.  During that time she also helped constitute the subfield of anthropology and education and its taking root in all major schools of education.

Mead, with Solon Kimball, Dell Hymes, George Spindler, and many others in the United States, successfully argued that anthropology had something to contribute to “education” whether one thought about it mostly as a matter of schooling reform and policy or, broadly, as a fundamental process for all human activity.  This argument was so successful that, at its heyday, in the mid 1970s, Teachers College had up to eight faculty members with doctorates in anthropology. They could be found in many departments as well as in the Foundations division: Educational Administration, International Education, Family and Community Education.

This sketch hints at a complex conversation among all involved about the place of anthropology in a school of education even as the discipline evolved, as did the field of education itself.  What is it, exactly, that anthropology might contribute to education? In the famous report on the conference often presented as the founding charter for the subfield of anthropology and education (Spindler 1955), Margaret Mead and a few other anthropologists had answers.  Ten years later, Cadzen, John and Hymes (1972) had somewhat different answers to questions about language, culture, poverty, discrimination and schooling that had become burning in every aspects of schooling policy.

Our goal is to continue these conversations in the new contexts within which anthropologists find themselves, given new challenges.  To give a better sense of what we aim to accomplish, several faculty and students have written short position papers which, we hope, will guide our conversations this coming October.

Lesley Bartlett (Associate Professor of Education) “Anthropological Methods in Educational Research“

Michael Scroggins (Doctoral Student) “Revisiting Cremin: New Starting Points and New Directions Forward“

Amina Tawasil (Northwestern University) “Culture as Pathmaking in Higher Education“

Hervé Varenne (Professor of Education) “On Educating Schools of Education about the Value of Anthropological Research“