Globalisation

[mongers]

Anthropology is just an excuse to look at boobs.

Well, yeah.

Ick.  National Geographic titties never have support. There's no lift and separation.

Well here's a fine pair for your edification.

[Eddie Teach]

Those look like boobies, not tits. 

[Monoriu]

Anthropology sounds fascinating.  Useless but fascinating.  It would be essential for a small number of scholars to keep researching this stuff and to preserve the collective knowledge.  But most students should study coding, not anthropology 

[viper37]

But most students should study coding, not anthropology 

Sure.  We remove all social sciences from universities, then we put 50% of our coders on unemployment and we fail to grasp why

[Josquius]

Anthropology sounds fascinating.  Useless but fascinating.  It would be essential for a small number of scholars to keep researching this stuff and to preserve the collective knowledge.  But most students should study coding, not anthropology 

Not sure I agree there.
The days where coding was the path to riches are over, and the ability to earn a  living from coding in the developed world is becoming less and less

[Malthus]

Anthropology sounds fascinating.  Useless but fascinating.  It would be essential for a small number of scholars to keep researching this stuff and to preserve the collective knowledge.  But most students should study coding, not anthropology 

We will need someone to study the cultural habits of all those masses of unemployed coders. 

But seriously - one of the problems is that "picking winners" in terms of what kids today ought to study to do well in future years is tough. Computer programming is an example of where lots of folks got it wrong - when I was going to school it was thought to be the road to riches, and it may have been for some, but for others it was the road to working IT support at best.

Mind you, anthropology is and unlikely road to riches - if that road was straight (the demand for scholars in the field will never be high). It isn't bad, though, as a starting point for other things.

[Berkut]

That is fucking stupid. I hate people who complain about populat culture in that manner.

If it gets people into anthropology, that is good. Full stop.

Anyone it gets in who is fucking stupid enough to be stunned once they get in that this work of fiction doesn't align well with actual science, was never going to make it as a scientist to begin with, so who cares?

Science needs to embrace *anything* in our fucking anti-science culture that gets people interested. Obscure, poorly funded, niche sciences like anthropology even more so than others.

You live in a very black or white world.  It brings in a lot of dross, dross that potentially takes away from more reasoned, focused, and thought out points.  As Raz slammed, it isn't a hard science, but it does rely on attempts at objectivity and critical theory-based knowledge.  Sure some might become worthwhile candidates to further the field (or hell, even just a bachelors in Anthropology), but most will hate when reality conflicts with their views.

I call bullshit. Most people who read clan of the cave bear and then take an anthro course are going to hate it if said course doesn't align with the work of fiction they read?

Got a cite for that? Some kind of evidence?

I think most people know that fiction is in fact fiction, and most people who take an anthropology course who would not otherwise are well served by doing so, and anthropology is well served by the increased interest.

An undergraduate class with several vocal idiots who refuse to accept that what they read in a work of fiction isn't true (and these types are quite willing to argue the points over and over ad nauseum) takes away from learning those more critical positions.  I saw this over and over - from the kid in the front row arguing with me about the factual nature of 300, to the student who demanded why I didn't talk about the prehistoric warrior empresses of the Near East.

Meh, I think this is more a imagined thing than a real thing. I went to college, and yeah, there is a small minority of dumbasses, but they are mostly ignored, and any mediocre professor has a half dozen tricks in their bag to shut down that kind of distracting crap.

And it exists no matter what anyway. There are always dumbasses in the world, and I don't think they increase by reading fiction that doesn't align with the latest thinking in anthropolgy or history.

What we need isn't a bunch of newly minted pseudo-powerwoman paleontologists (or graphic novel true believers) but rather more critical thinking culturally.  Attracting idiots into a class they are not ready for, won't understand, and later on will condemn as "awful" is not the way to fix the anti-science views of this land.

How does someone get ready for an undergrad introduction to anthropology or history?

interest is the #1 requisite for anyone taking an exploratory interest in a new field. Whining that their interest is not "pure" enough is elitist crap, IMO. Who cares why they are interested? THEY ARE INTERESTED! Channel it, mold it, and enlighten them and others. That is what teaching is about.

Not sticking your nose up and declaring that some history students interest is not ideologically pure enough to allow him in a college class because he was turned on to Greek history because he read 300 and thought it was cool.

Then again, this was at a landgrant university that was tasked with allowing the students of Wyoming to come to 13th grade even if they weren't suited to ask "would you like fries with that?"  so my views might be a bit jaded.

Yeah, I think they might be - silly students and their silly interest in learning!

[Valmy]

Yeah that was PDH's problem. His students were just too interested in learning. Drove him nuts. 

[grumbler]

Yeah that was PDH's problem. His students were just too interested in learning. Drove him nuts. 

If they didn't come to their interest in learning via a pure enough path, he hated it.  But, since he doesn't still have the job anyway, that's a moot point.

There were times in my college classrooms when i would have been happy to have someone interested enough in the topic to argue about it.  That was community college, and so many students were there just because their parents made them "stay in school."

[Valmy]

If they didn't come to their interest in learning via a pure enough path, he hated it.

Not true. He has made many posts about his career over the years. Granted, mostly for entertainment value. I don't see any basis for attacking him professionally like this except for a cheap ad hominem.

[PDH]

If they didn't come to their interest in learning via a pure enough path, he hated it.

It is nice to see you make stuff up to try and be funny.  Or, make stuff up to be an asshole.  Or both.

[grumbler]

It is nice to see you make stuff up to try and be funny.  Or, make stuff up to be an asshole.  Or both.

Just trying to imitate the master.  Could it be that neither of us was being entirely serious?

[CountDeMoney]

How does someone get ready for an undergrad introduction to anthropology or history?

interest is the #1 requisite for anyone taking an exploratory interest in a new field. Whining that their interest is not "pure" enough is elitist crap, IMO. Who cares why they are interested? THEY ARE INTERESTED! Channel it, mold it, and enlighten them and others. That is what teaching is about.

"Does this fit my Gen Ed elective requirement for non-lab social science?  Sweet! Beer bong!"

[Oexmelin]

Got a cite for that? Some kind of evidence?

Is classroom experience not enough? You think PDH made stuff up? Isn't Languish, of all places, not evidence enough of that dynamic, of the detrimental effect to conversation when one argues obstinately any minute point of detail on matters where expertise was acquired five minutes before by googling about it? 

For what it's worth, what PDH expresses corresponds to some of my experience too, and I teach in a very, very selective college. It's never as simple as fiction vs non-fiction: trouble comes with fictions with truth-claims, and fictionalized documentaries... It's got nothing to do with pure vs impure interest. If students get into the Haitian Revolution because of Assassin's Creed, all the better for it. The fictionalized claims of Assassin's Creed are far enough from history to be unproblematic. But there are some topics which produce a lot of source material to sustain one's specific enthusiastic claims, say, "How the Irish Saved Civilization", and there is a moment when enthusiasm veers into douchebaggery, for very little worthwhile outcome (think clip vs magazine). And such are unequally distributed. As a student, my worse classrooms experience by far were my courses on WWII, because they were peopled with guys who thought the purpose of any lecture was to quibble over units and armament based on their knowledge of cardboard counters and their memorization of order of battle from the Osprey books. 

And if something has enough of a hold over the popular imagination, any class can easily transform into a Sisyphean task of dismantling what has been so passionately embraced. In that context - and in the context of social sciences and history taken as electives - it is highly debatable whether or not some of these works actually benefit a greater understanding of the matters at stake.

This is coming from the perspective of someone who *likes* to build courses around matters of popular imagination, but I do that precisely because one of the main purposes of those classes will be to fight the extremely ingrained worldview that these shows rely on. Not every class should be like this, and I can totally understand how, *sometimes*, about *certain* works, one could think it's more pedagogical trouble than it's worth, beyond your demands for unfailing celebration. 

[Berkut]

Well, at least you've put to rest the idea that the problem is elitist whining about the purity of interest.

I guess we can go back to bitching about how much better the world would be without "wrong" fiction and Osprey books cluttering the minds of the peasants and making them interested in topics that should be reserved for those who already have embraced the particular world views of their instructors?

I've been to college as well, and taught as well. Of course, I taught useless stuff like computer science, where we never, ever had to spend time addressing the fact that the actual state of the science might not align with what intro students expect (especially self taught ones, lord knows THAT never happened), or are already convinced is THE TRUTH. So I guess I was just fortunate to find that doing so really wasn't all that hard, and managing students and their pre-conceived notions was simply a skill I was expected to either have, or at least learn as a matter of course. Certainly nothing herculean or in the top twenty things to find annoying about teaching 18 year old undergrads.

Personally, I don't find it all that debatable that things that spark the interest of people who otherwise might not even be exposed to a field are pretty much great - full stop.