Teaching anthropology in the UK today is undergoing an important change - anthropology has now become an 'A' Level subject, which means that it will be taught not only at universities but also at secondary schools and colleges of further education. This is a great opportunity to reflect on what it means to teach anthropology to young people before they go to University. How will it be different to teaching anthropology to undergraduates and postgraduates? How will it transform the way we conceive of teaching and learning anthropological fieldwork, given it is sometimes said that anthropology demands a certain level of life experience and wisdom from its scholars if they are to understand and conduct ethnographic research?
One may argue that some of the key anthropological proclivities include an openness to diversity and people and a readiness to (at least temporarily and to a certain extent) embrace different worlds in order to understand them. Could we then hope that through delving into anthropology from a rather early age, young people could rely on this 'A' Level subject to add to their moral journeys towards mutual tolerance and respect in our multicultural society? Or, as some colleagues have begun to wonder, in order to make anthropology appealing to a younger generation, would we have to exoticise the Other and make the journey 'exciting'? What would be the consequences for conceptualising difference and diversity then? And, would we need to be alarmed about 'exoticising' and its excitations or could we find there a spark of initial enthusiasm to nourish an exploratory, reaching-out spirit sustaining the necessary and abolishing the unnecessary boundaries between self and other? Learning anthropology without doing fieldwork (or would 'A' Level students have fieldwork practice eventually?) still demands vivid imagination, some wisdom and patience when entering unfamiliar worlds. How could teachers best support these first encounters with ethnography? What would be the specific goals and methods of teaching anthropology as an 'A' Level?
Could we and how could we teach anthropology as a philosophy and practice of humanism, where one reaches out to the other through experiencing, understanding and respecting what binds and separates people?
