Paper short abstract:

Draws on experiences teaching Day Release teenagers 'Liberal Arts' in the late 60s, giving anthropology lectures in Hull prison as part of a diploma for university entrance and the requests she received for literacy and spatial geography lessons during ethnographic research with Gypsies in Britain.

Paper long abstract:

Inspired by Professor Dorey's 2014 Inaugural lecture 'Geography, Inequality and Oxford' which exposed extremities of difference, this presentation recalls the experience and ethnography of teaching Day Release teenagers 'Liberal Studies' at the Oxford College of Further Education, in the late 60s. Fresh from a postgraduate diploma in FE, this would-be anthropologist confronted rural/urban, class divisions and racism to a multicultural group, never destined for university. Lessons about power, geographical localities and differences included visits to Morris Motors, a Magistrates court, rural Oxfordshire and the film 'In the Heat of the Night'. The students, who included Jamaican migrants, articulated their differences and new self awareness. Many lived in localities unfrequented by university members, although today now gentrified. One former pupil is key receptionist at an Oxford College and always greets her former teacher. This future professor of anthropology would embrace many of the same variegated strategies when teaching undergraduates. Her fieldwork among Gypsies, just 50 miles from Oxford, sometimes triggered requests among a largely non literate group for lessons in literacy and spatial geographical issues. Later she was invited to give anthropology lectures in Hull prison as part of a diploma which facilitated university entrance. The all male 'students' sat in a circle overseen by the warder behind a glass wall. One inmate successfully applied to read anthropology at Hull and graduated with distinction. Anthropology and geography, using qualitative or sweeping broad methods confront the cultural implications of difference in locality, space, poverty or privilege.