Anthropology teachers grounding students in reality

For those people who think there is no redeeming value to reality-based TV shows, Conrad Kottak, PhD, chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Michigan and distinguished author of seven scholarly books, politely disagrees.

Kottak, who has taught introductory anthropology classes for 35 years to Michigan undergraduate students, regularly uses footage from MTV’s “Real World” in his courses.

“It’s perfect,” he said. “They bring together seven people -- always at least one gay or lesbian, one Hispanic or Asian and a straight white guy from the Midwest -- and we analyze how they play out the roles.”

Clearly this is a different anthropology course from the one your parents -- or even your older siblings -- took in college. But current events have pushed the study of humans and their cultural development out of the scientific journals and onto the front pages of daily newspapers and news weeklies.

“Ever since 9/11, the differences among people in the world have become so apparent, and there is such a need to truly understand this,” said Don Brenneis, a UC Santa Cruz professor and the president of the American Anthropological Assn. Anthropology is in the news and in demand.

AAA statistics show there were 603 graduates earning doctorate degrees in anthropology last year, a hefty 50% gain over the number 10 years earlier. Among undergraduates, the gain is a groundswell: In 2003, there were 10,468 students receiving a bachelor’s degree, nearly double the number in 1993. But at its heart, modern anthropology begins with education, and the old “Anthropology 101” lecture approach to the increasingly popular field doesn’t hold up.

The association has announced the 2004 launch of AnthroSource, an Internet-based portal to a centralized anthropology data bank the group intends to serve as an important educational component.

“Our field is just made for the Internet and not necessarily textual, not just words,” Brenneis said. “I’m thinking of photos and audios too. It’s really exciting to think what’s available -- once you get past the copyright issues. There are so many applications in anthropology.”

The association also has been exploring how to improve teaching techniques, as well as how to encourage unified educational programs for students as young as kindergartners.

“For the majority of college students, the only experience they had with anthropology is building pueblos with shoeboxes in third grade,” Brenneis said.

And on the other side of the lectern, “there’s just so much you don’t know when you first start [teaching anthropology] because you simply weren’t told,” said David McCurdy, who has taught at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., for more than 35 years. “There can be a lot of trial and error before you settle in, but being an effective communicator is what a lot of what we do is about. I know it’s important in the field from my time in India, but the same goes back in the classroom.”

“The thing you have to remember about anthropology in the introductory classes is that almost no one in college had it in high school,” said Joyce Lucke, an anthropology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis.

“Just ask your students questions like what book do you think everyone in the class has read or what movie everyone has seen,” Lucke said. “That’s one easy way for many of them to learn for the first time that not everyone is like them.”

Enlightening them is one thing. Holding the attention of students whose computer sophistication frequently outstrips the teacher’s is one of the biggest modern teaching challenges. Nobody today wants to sit through a 1 1/2-hour lecture, Kottak said.

Using video clips of “Real World” is not only a nice fit for anthropology, it’s also a nifty way to gain the attention of sleep-challenged students in early-morning lectures, he noted. “The days of throwing erasers at them are over.”