Teaching Man to Children

Teaching Man to Children Scene: a fifth-grade classroom in a public school in Newton, Mass. Fresh from seeing a film about baboons, the ten-year-olds are discussing "dominance"--the bane of every kid brother and sister. "I saw some birds eating bread," says a boy in a green shirt, "and this huge crow came along and took the bread because he was bigger than they were." The talk swings to the problem of dominance at the water fountain. "That's the way life is," says a pudgy philosopher. "You're weaker than the older boy, and you can't get the water if he's thirsty too."

Gradually the teacher steers the children into talking about what is the use of a hierarchy in the first place. "The system keeps the peace," she suggests. The hour ends with a spirited game in which one team of children defines the characteristics of each member of a baboon troop, and then another team tries to guess where the individual described fits into the baboon hierarchy.

Fantastic Species. Such intriguing seminars for fifth-graders are now commonplace in schools using an experimental social studies program called "Man: A Course of Study." The one-year course was devised by Psychologist Jerome S. Bruner, director of Harvard's Center for Cognitive Studies, Irven DeVore, professor of anthropology at Harvard, Asen Balikci, an anthropologist at the University of Montreal, and Peter B. Dow of Education Development Center Inc., the nonprofit Cambridge firm that produces the course materials. "We're trying to present a point of view," says Bruner. "We want to give children some appreciation of what a fantastic species man is--that he's not helpless; that he's capable of growth, of amplifying his own powers by culture. We want them to get this whole notion that man is think-aboutable."

The first half of "Man: A Course of Study" teaches children what is known about the life cycles and behavior patterns of particular animal species (salmon, herring gulls, baboons). The animal facts are designed to stimulate freewheeling discussions about human behavior, mainly as the kids see it. "We are trying to rely as much on their insights as possible," says Course Director Dow. "We would argue that it's more fruitful to let the analogies grow out of the experience of the kids than to try to structure the analogies for them."

In the second half of the course, the youngsters study movies, stories and special materials about a primitive Eskimo culture. They learn that what seems like a very simple way of life has all the complex relationships found in modern urban society: kinship systems, trading, mythology.

What Is Human? The course provides basic training in how to study behavior. One popular text is a reprint of Professor DeVore's field notes on baboons, which gives students a thorough look at what he observed and how he arrived at his conclusions. Another is "The Observer's Handbook," a series of charts that the child uses to study human conflict, play and teaching-learning. In studying conflict, for example, the class quietly watches kindergarten children for half an hour, observing how fights start, how they end and how they can be prevented.

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."

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