Friday, December 10, 2010

Anthropology, not Anthropologie

In my ideal world, certain disciplines would be taught in middle school.  Yes, I realize there is a budget crisis, however, I feel like there is a whole host of academic disciplines that many students do not realize even exist until they reach college.  It seems a little strange that many people have to wait until they're eighteen to become familiar with a subject they plan to specialize in for the next few years of their life.

The other reason I argue for anthropology is that you cannot study the subject without positioning yourself in the anthropological context of the world.  Anthropology is the study of people, you are a person, if you do not fit somewhere in the discipline's framework the discipline is failing you.  This is a harder case to make for subjects such as math (how many times have we heard students ask, "When am I ever going to use this in real life?"), or history (a discipline that is being revamped, but at the middle school level in the United States is still full of dusty dead, white, straight men).

Also, with branches in cultural anthropology, biological anthropology and archaeology there are options for students to tailor the discipline to their own interests.

Yes, it's a dream, but I figure that's the way most things start.


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