Margaret Mead
(1901-1978)
Her attic office in the Museum of Natural History on Columbus Avenue will always be synonymous with her probing, adventurous and integrative perspectives on human learning. With Margaret Mead anthropology was no longer man's work. She breaks the gender barricade for the social sciences.
​
But even more significantly, her film festival, in the spirit of her work, is undoubtedly one of the world's great celebrations of human diversity, coinciding with the start of autumn in New York City for the last eight years.
​
Of all her writings, one obscure but ageless essay written in 1959 entitled "Is Education Obsolete" speaks with a dint of prophesy about "life long learning" and the consequences of age segregation in formal schooling. That, next to Jules Henry's "Cross Cultural Outline of Education" comprise two of the most seminal 'anthropological' analyses of education that we have, and should be required reading of every teacher program in America (or any setting in which teachers are "trained").