Building Citizens
This chapter explores the research behind Man: A Course of Study (MACOS). It provides insight into why, for the people involved, the curriculum project was so profoundly personal. Many of the researchers and teachers involved in its creation embraced the liberal aspirations of the decade. Anthropology promised a means by which students could come to appreciate the cultural patterns of communities vastly different from their own while recognizing the fundamental equality of all peoples. If education held the key to securing the nation's place in world, they imagined, it would also play a significant role in teaching students how to overcome any racial apprehensions they may have acquired from parents or peers. Making visible the careful labor that went into MACOS's creation at every level reveals the political and personal stakes inherent to the administrative vision, the ethnographic footage, and the finalized classroom booklets and films, where each sought to transform the way students thought about themselves and the society in which they lived.