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Accepted Paper:

Anthropology goes to school: 50 years of teaching about other cultures  
Barry Dufour (De Montfort University, Leicester)

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore school attempts in the UK to introduce pupils to ideas and subject-matter on other cultures, focusing on curriculum content and the structural background to the varying fortunes of these attempts. It will argue that the recent involvement of the Royal Anthropological Institute in the school curriculum provides an important basis for new opportunities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will explore the uneasy progress of curriculum opportunities for school pupils to encounter concepts and information about different cultures around the world. These teaching programmes have rarely been badged as 'anthropology': more often as geography, multi-cultural and anti-racist education, global education, development education, citizenship education and similar subject names and discourses. There were some successful attempts to explore, more directly, anthropological approaches, in the 1960s and 1970s, in primary and secondary schools, but the most marked breakthrough did not occur until the 21st century with the backing of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI).

The paper will suggest historical and structural reasons why all of the social sciences entered the 14-18 curriculum offer, with the exception of anthropology. It will also suggest that the less direct discourses were nevertheless valid and important routes by which pupils could engage in learning about the diversity and interaction of human groups and cultural practices.

Finally, it will explore the threats and opportunities now present in the second decade of the 21st century to consolidate the new GCE in anthropology and to extend the insights and subject matter of anthropology to younger pupils.

Panel P27
Developing anthropology in pre-university curricula
  Session 1