Donating Anthropology
Most of my freelance editing income goes into a PayPal account. When I discovered Etsy.com, I spent the majority of that extra income on the site, buying cute things for Chickpea and awesome bone-related stuff for myself. But then I found out that I could donate my PayPal balance at DonorsChoose.org. It's a cool site: teachers from all over the country post their needs (for specific projects, for equipment, for field trips), and people donate a little bit or a lot. Some of the projects have matching funds from local and national organizations. Thinking I could do some good rather than blowing my money on more stuff, I scanned the site for things related to anthropology and archaeology. A search for archaeology brings up 5 projects, and a search for anthropology brings up 4, two of which are for an LCD projector. That's an amazingly small number of projects considering how many have been posted (and fulfilled) on the site.
This experience makes me wonder if there is any kind of outreach going on to the K-12 set. My department does an annual Archaeology Day, and I think there's also an Anthropology Day. We often do mini-lectures and workshops through the planetarium on campus, which hosts weekend and summer programs for middle schoolers. I guess I just assumed that, since I was interested in anthropology as a middle schooler and since my department does a bit of outreach, that would filter down into the grade schools. I wonder if there are any sample curricula for grade school teachers, so they can impart an anthropological perspective in social studies, or do a miniature archaeological excavation project in science class, or study human or animal bones in biology. It would be really awesome to see anthropology brought to kids below the university level, to introduce the next generation to anthropology before they go off to college intent on being doctors/laywers/businesspeople and thinking that social sciences are useless. But it might also open up employment opportunities for anthropologists. If you think about it, academics with post-graduate degrees in other subjects can be licensed to teach the K-12 set: foreign languages, English, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, computer science, even psychology in some high schools. The fact that anthropology is never taught in the grade schools has always been surprising to me.
So I would encourage all the K-12 teachers out there to think about projects involving anthropology, and to reach out to their local anthropologist and/or to DonorsChoose. You don't really need a DNA sequencer or an LCD projector or an archaeology-in-a-box kit to teach kids anthropological methods. A few books and tools will go a long way, and I would love to donate them to you.
(For what it's worth, I ended up donating money to a classroom in NC that needs copies of the Iliad and the Odyssey. My other loves are, of course, books and classical culture, and too many schools have crappy books with only selections of ancient works rather than complete texts. Even if the kids are reading texts in translation, that's still cool with me.)
This experience makes me wonder if there is any kind of outreach going on to the K-12 set. My department does an annual Archaeology Day, and I think there's also an Anthropology Day. We often do mini-lectures and workshops through the planetarium on campus, which hosts weekend and summer programs for middle schoolers. I guess I just assumed that, since I was interested in anthropology as a middle schooler and since my department does a bit of outreach, that would filter down into the grade schools. I wonder if there are any sample curricula for grade school teachers, so they can impart an anthropological perspective in social studies, or do a miniature archaeological excavation project in science class, or study human or animal bones in biology. It would be really awesome to see anthropology brought to kids below the university level, to introduce the next generation to anthropology before they go off to college intent on being doctors/laywers/businesspeople and thinking that social sciences are useless. But it might also open up employment opportunities for anthropologists. If you think about it, academics with post-graduate degrees in other subjects can be licensed to teach the K-12 set: foreign languages, English, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, computer science, even psychology in some high schools. The fact that anthropology is never taught in the grade schools has always been surprising to me.
So I would encourage all the K-12 teachers out there to think about projects involving anthropology, and to reach out to their local anthropologist and/or to DonorsChoose. You don't really need a DNA sequencer or an LCD projector or an archaeology-in-a-box kit to teach kids anthropological methods. A few books and tools will go a long way, and I would love to donate them to you.
(For what it's worth, I ended up donating money to a classroom in NC that needs copies of the Iliad and the Odyssey. My other loves are, of course, books and classical culture, and too many schools have crappy books with only selections of ancient works rather than complete texts. Even if the kids are reading texts in translation, that's still cool with me.)
Comments
www.onlineuniversalwork.com
and then i fell in love. i've taken many various anthropology courses since, and the more i learn, the more i realize what i wasn't taught in high school. all the subfields of anthro strike me as so valuable, i'm disappointed to think of how many people miss the anthropological viewpoint because it's not taught to school children.
i remember, particularly, the moment i was sitting in biological anthro and realized, "oh my god, i finally understand evolution." before that i hadn't realized, perhaps couldn't have known, how seldom and vaguely it was discussed in high school.
i'm glad to hear about your work, as well. i think my heart is pulling me toward anthropology with a mighty force, and i often wonder what i will actually be able to do with an anthropology degree.