George Dearborn Spindler was a leading figure in 20th-century anthropology and regarded as the founder of the anthropology of education. [1] [2] He edited a very large series of short monographs, turning nearly every significant ethnographic text of the 20th century into a shorter work accessible to the public and to anthropology students everywhere.[ citation needed] He was one of the first to teach courses on the anthropology of American culture (culture of the United States).[ citation needed] Nearly all of his publications and activities were in collaboration with his wife, Louise. [3] [4]
Spindler was originally trained as a psychologist, but departed from traditional psychological methods to do participant-observation with the Menominee. [1]
He was at one time the editor of American Anthropologist. [5] He died on July 1, 2014, at the age of 94 (Turan, 2014 [3])