Education: Teaching Man to Children

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One of Bruner's goals is to teach children "the general idea of what's meant by adaptability: how a culture develops as a way of adapting to the environment." Bruner's big goal, though, is to get the youngsters to think about the nature of man and try to answer three basic questions: "What is human about human beings? How did they get that way? How can they be made more so?" The children's response has been extremely enthusiastic. In a generally glowing evaluation of the course, the Harvard School of Education praised the "classroom climate" and reported that children often named "Man" as their favorite subject.

The Problem of Violence. As Bruner sees it, the problems of the course fascinate children because they are universal and immediate. "A generation ago, the problem for kids was sex," he says. "For this generation, it's violence." Indeed, the course seems to work particularly well in ghetto schools. Observes Dow: "Urban kids are much more attuned to questions of survival and not so frightened by some of the gutsier issues like death and reproduction." Few parents have objected to the course, even though it contains rather fundamental information on mating habits and some of the bloodiest film imaginable on the slaughtering of seals.

Though it has not been formally adopted by any school system, "Man: A Course of Study" is now being taught in 1,000 public-and private-school classrooms throughout the U.S. Wholesale acceptance seems remote: the course materials are expensive (roughly $4 per pupil v. $1 for an ordinary course), and schools must agree to submit teachers to a 20-session workshop on how to present the materials. Even so, the initial results are so good that Education Development Center is planning a second behavior course for children, to be called "Exploring Human Nature."