2014 Blogging Archaeology eBook

Kids. [Reading list cix ] Talking about how and why to tell childrenabout anthropology allowed me to bust out my all-time favorite KurtVonnegut quote, from his 1973 Playboy interview cx :"I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and Ishould have learned that in the first grade. A first grader shouldunderstand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that thereare thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that allcultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots ofalternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible andattractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have tocontinue this way if we don't like it."Science museums in particular tend to teach archaeological andpalaeontological concepts to kids, but instruction in ethnography andlinguistics is generally lacking. Jumping off from Matt Thompson’s“Illustrated Man cxi ” post on Savage Minds and my post on “TeachingPreschoolers about Anthropology,” we read a variety of kids’ books andcritiqued their presentation of anthropological concepts. While myexperience focuses almost solely on the preschool set, since I have twodaughters under five, many of the graduate students had worked withFPAN on developing activities for the Grades K-8 set in Florida throughthe “Beyond Artifacts” cxii guide. One example is the detailed, three-dayintroduction to archaeology lesson plan that Tristan Harrenstein created,tested, and refined for his project [download here cxiii ]. The consensuswas that teaching basic concepts in anthropology was best done atGrades 3 and above, since children at this age can read on their own,use a computer, and self-educate by following up on informationthrough the library or internet. The resulting kid-focused projects cxivincluded books, a felt board, videos, and classroom activities. Teachinganthropology to kids is still a largely untapped market, which is oddconsidering how interested they tend to be in archaeology and inlearning about other cultures and customs. Video games andaugmented reality may be the new frontier in kids’ education, so findingways to combine anthropological topics with advances in computingwill be worthwhile.Blogging Archaeology Page 41