We are indebted to Mr. Barry D. Varley-Tipton for his generous donation of the MACOS (Man:  A Course of Study) curriculum project materials.

Man:  A Course of Study (commonly referred to by the acronym MACOS or M.A.C.O.S) was the brainchild of the American psychotherapist and the then Harvard academic Jerome Bruner.  Bruner believed that it was possible to teach children to be more humane and eliminate racism and ethnocentrism by studying another culture closely. He also believed that you can teach children complicated ideas using the ‘spiral curriculum’ method which introduces the same theme in increasing complexity over a period of time.

The IOE LibGuide on the MACOS collection is at http://libguides.ioe.ac.uk/macos.  It provides the context and offers information on the controversy surrounding the project.  It also includes useful links to websites and resources on MACOS held at the Newsam Library and links to the teaching resources available to download.  The bibliography is a list of articles and reports on the MACOS project published since its implementation and includes current publications via an RSS feed from ERIC.

Nazlin Bhimani