In scholarly discourse and in the mass media, public schools are portrayed as facing new challenges in an increasingly connected, mobile and «glocalized» world. TSANTSA 10 wants to examine anthropology's theoretical and methodological contributions to the investigation of schools and their role in contemporary societies.

The study of sociocultural reproduction and the construction of «community» are core issues in anthropology. They are also, of course, among the major tasks explicitly assigned to the public school system: on the one hand, it is supposed to prepare young adults to enter an increasingly global, multicultural society; on the other hand, and less explicitly, the system functions to reproduce established knowledge and to perpetuate social and civic norms. The school system is asked to bring students of increasingly heterogeneous (linguistic, ethnic, national) backgrounds towards a convergence around common standards of knowledge and performance while simultaneously respecting the multiplicity of their cultural origins and promoting their talents as individuals.

This double mission of public schooling is in no sense new. Since its beginnings in the 18th and 19th century, public schooling has contributed to the integration and homogenization of the most varied forms of social, regional, confessional and linguistic differences, all the while participating in a renewed internal social differentiation along competitive norms. At the beginning of the 21st century, however, this ambivalence of the public school system – torn between integration and differentiation, support and selection, modernization and conservation of traditional values and norms – takes on new forms: As numerous studies in several European countries show, highly selective school systems have a marginalizing rather than an integrative effect – especially on children of non-privileged migrants.

TSANTSA 10 wants to investigate the tasks and functions of public schools in the past, present and future, in Europe and elsewhere, from an anthropological perspective. For the 2005 edition on ANTHROPOLOGY AND MULTICULTURAL SCHOOLS we seek contributions on the following topics:

• methodological and theoretical contributions to contemporary research on education and schooling;
• empirically grounded or historical work touching on themes such as schools and cultural reproduction; schools and the construction of «community»;
• anthropological studies of schools and «multiculturalism», in and outside of Europe;
• reflections on the (currently) anglophone debate on the possibility and benefits of introducing anthropology into secondary school curricula.

For further information regarding TSANTSA as well as for more details on our publishing policy, please go to: http://www.seg-sse.ch/.