CURRICULUM MODELS FOR TEACHING ANTHROPOLOGY

Abstract

During the past decade there has been an increasing interest in teaching anthropology at all grade levels in U.S. schools. National programs have been developed both through federal and private funds. Textbooks, films, simulation kits, and a wide variety of teaching methods have been generated. Perhaps this is an appropriate time to examine the nature of this development and provide some synthesis upon which future development of anthropological curricula might be based. Prior to any heuristic model construction, the question, Why teach anthropology? must be answered. More often than not, however, the question what anthropology should be taught is the only question asked. The answer to, What anthropology should be taught? should depend upon the answer to, Why teach anthropology? The coursecurriculum selection process should be secondary to the purpose for teaching anthropology. The most common curriculum model for teaching anthropology is the subject matter model of which there may be several varieties. One such model might be referred to as the subject matter curiosity model, (A). The answer to the question, Why teach anthropology? for this model would be that anthropological data is interesting and may be self-selected through the interests of the students. In this fashion the curriculum model consists of a series of curiosities which the teacher may include at random within the framework of the existing courses. In this model the data is mostly descriptive with little concept formation. A typical unit of this kind was entitled, Houses among the Indians (fourth grade), and included a description of an Eskimo igloo, a Northwest coast plank house, a Hopi stone house, a Plains skin tepee, and a Woodland bark wigwam. No attempt was made to discuss why different materials were used in construction, why different settlement patterns existed, nor how the people lived within the houses. Not only does this model remove cultural traits from their context, it tends to increase the opportunity for stereotyping, e.g., all Eskimos live in igloos. This approach many times encourages ethnocentrism. At a workshop in California a few years ago, some of the teachers included the following groups among a list of primitive societies: the Spanish in California, the Western pioneers, and the American colonists. Several made the distinction between primitive people and U.S. society based on the fact that primitive people had no culture. Finally, this model tends to overemphasize material culture to the neglect of other features of a culture such as social organization, religion, and politics. Among this same group of teachers, only 10% included the nonmaterial features of the societies which