A scholastic dialogue on why anthropology should be in the high school curriculum

I must admit that this may not be a dialogue in the sense that it's two or more people contributing to the discussion. It is a dialogue as in' I can write enough for two people' and scholastic as in 'this is something I am really passionate about'. I will begin with an important question: Is this even related to world issues? You bet your booty it is! Anthropology by definition is a curriculum which endeavors to study the whole of humanity, in all of its cultural, social, biological, and archaeological subtexts. When one studies the various disciplines of anthropology one is taught to do away with their biased ethnocentric views of the world (redundancy noted)long enough to study different and seemingly strange peoples, ergo cultures, societies, and biologies, in such a way that one's study of those peoples is not clouded with fallacious judgment. I say seemingly strange because when one can successfully look at a culture like the head-hunters of Borneo and not immediately focus on the peculiarity of it but instead endeavor to understand such a culture through the eyes of its people, strange is not a word in your vocabulary. Anthropology has taught me that just because a culture is unknown to you does not necessarily make it adverse,wrong, or strange.

It is from this that I draw my argument. Imagine a world where people harness the ability to first remove all of the biases that have been ingrained into them since their inception, sculpted from a shared cultural identity, and then work towards understanding the very thing which is bewildering to them with the clarity of a newborn baby. A world which is foiled by our current reality, where people jump to biased conclusions about that which is foreign to them based solely on the fact that it is foreign to them. The former is a world which I believe can be worked towards via the implementation of anthropology in the high school curriculum.

All through our young adult lives rarely is the importance of understanding what is beyond our shores emphasized to us outside of the context of history or economics. This to me is a grave failing indeed because there is world outside of our backyard and to go through life without even a glance its way or a guiding hand helping us to make sense of it breeds palpable ignorance and ethnocentrism.

Anthropology, however, breeds cultural sensitivity. It is a humanity and a science. Much like a journalist, anthropologists must free their minds of preconceived notions, biases, and judgments in order to collect the most objective data possible. As teenagers move on to college and the professional world it is imperative that they are capable of fairly and intelligibly questioning that which is unfamiliar to them. Each successive generation of leaders (and non-leaders) needs to know America's place amongst a backdrop of varied and diverse cultures. By teaching the basic precepts of anthropology to high schoolers we help them understand the world we live in, not just the country we live in. It is in this way that we can best serve ourselves and others.