preview

Summary Of Margaret Mead's Coming Of Age In Samoa

Decent Essays

Margaret Mead was first to major in psychology at Bernard but later went on to Colombia and received a doctorate studying with Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict. To her Anthropology was a big commitment to learn and study new human behaviors. In her book Coming Of Age In Samoa she argued the children now a days in a modern society are forced to fit education in their lives rather than "inflexible education mould". Her main goal was to study the lives and behavior changes from a new born to a young adult. Although she could have done her research in Modern society she wanted to get a different aspect of behaviors on minds that where not corrupted. Her research was aiming towards a different type of culture, a culture that education was not the focus but more based on home standards and values. In her book Coming of Age In Samoa she describes the social facts and gives a thick description based on research done on "simple people", theories that made her book a best seller.

In Meads intro to the book she explains the research they are trying to conduct and how it cannot be done in a modern world country. She explains they have no control over to what the child has been exposed to that every research they would conduct would result in a different outcome. To solve this dilemma, she decided to target her studies to "simple people, primitive peoples, whose society has never attained the complexity of our own." (pg. 7 paragraph 2). Therefore in 1925 Margaret Mead went out on her first

Get Access