Lecture is not "Broadcasting": A rant in two parts

Monday, Monday.....

I just spent 3 hours responding to Discussion Board posts on my Distance Learning course.  I have two 5 week courses running for our Summer II term.  One Cultural Anth and one Archy class.  I have many lessons fresh in my mind.  Yes, they, always, teach me something these classes and students of mine.

At my institution we are being required to undergo 5 separate trainings in a two year window.  Somehow, we faculty have become a "problem".  That degree-thing that we have?  That makes us content-masters and we shouldn't be that.  We are to be facilitators.  I feel a bit like the intelligentsia under Pol Pot being sent off to the agricultural collectives.  That is, of course, a horrendous metaphor but the package of behaviors driving these trainings are remarkably similar and that is worth noting.

This is my understanding of the content of these mandatory trainings.  The methods of teaching a standard lecture class have been labeled "broadcasting".  Someone, somewhere (I do know who but I choose not to invoke names) has decided that I stand in front of groups of students and deliver information as if "broadcasting" to the multitudes.  This is a "bad thing" because it does not engage students nor make them part of their own learning process.

It is a ridiculous and inaccurate straw man.  I am not teaching classes of 400.  I have a cap of 36 and given that it is a community college, my attendance is likely to be in the twenties at most.  I don't stand there droning on, I interact with my students in an educational discussion.  However, this is deemed "not good".  I am to let them learn themselves through group activities.  I don't, necessarily, have a problem with groups activities.  In fact, I did a lot of them many years ago when I was at University.  This, of course, doesn't fit in with the straw man of the educational consultants and experts of today and, thus, the re-training that I require.  They argue that I teach through lecture because that was the method I learned by.  I wonder if these folks, in fact went to a University.  We learned a lot of different ways.  In many science classes we had labs, in my Archaeology classes we did lots and lots of group projects.  Steve Plog made me work in a group counting the trees on campus (survey strategy exercise)--thanks for that, Steve.  Shocking to think that my professors dovetailed their teaching to the skill/knowledge needing to be learned!  Shocking to think that one size fits all wasn't and isn't part of the educational process anywhere that I know--that is, outside of Distance Learning classes.  OH, SNAP!

When Groups Go Bad:  how about we talk about what groups can't do that an expert can?

Back to my Distantly Learning class.  (I did bring that up for a reason, you know.) I have a series of Discussion Boards in which my students discuss important issues in Cultural Anthropology.  One of the Boards is on anthropological ethics.  I give them a case from the AAA website and ask them to discuss what they might do.  (I know this isn't really doing ethnography but I am opposed to allowing survey course level students to conduct any fieldwork for fear of the potential damage they could do to a community.  We can debate that at another time.)  At the moment, the case I have posted is Case 16:  What's in that Bottle, What's in that Pipe.  Here.  I like it because Vine Deloria has a comment up which, completely and quite beautifully, turns the whole issue on its ear (and makes me chuckle with evil glee.)  I ask them to refer to our ethics code in their answer.

I was greeted with a pile of new posts over the weekend which, first of all, excerpted pieces of the ethics code which were completely misunderstood.  I have noticed that in recent years that many students feel that just any old quote will do and it really doesn't matter if the quote supports the argument or not.   Further than that, however, was the disconcerting trend for the students to engage in their own group think.  Each successive post tended more and more to an agreement that it was the job of the anthropologist to inform these "Native Americans" about the dangers of alcohol abuse.  Whatever we all think about "students today", I think most of us in the trenches would happily support the notion that they are not reading with any care nor are they very good at critical thinking.  And they want to "save" everyone.  Who in the group is capable of revealing their own cultural biases?  I assure you that it is rare for them to do it for themselves.  Who is going to use the very skill set that we anthropologists are taught?  Who is going to ask these questions:

 1.  My brother is a welder.  At the end of a hard week of manual labor, he has been known to pick up a six pack of beer and throw some hamburgers on the grill for his family.  Do you assume that my brother has an alcohol problem?  Why would you assume that a person of Native American descent abuses alcohol because they want to purchase some form of alcohol?

1.  If you were writing an article on British music and had the opportunity to interview (the regretfully late) Amy Winehouse on her musical influences, would you take that opportunity to lecture her on the dangers of drug abuse?  Would that be individually respectful, as required by the AAA Code?  Would it, in fact, "work"?

2.  If you were an anthropologist in Peru studying the thought process behind the "guinea pig healing" that you saw, would you communicate to the people you were interviewing all the things that were "wrong" with what they are doing?  If you objected to the killing of the guinea pig, do you have the right, as an anthropologist, to share those objections or demand that they stop this practice?  Should you tell them they need to go to a "real" doctor?

Who can continue to frame the issues in the terms they need.  And, let's be honest, I can't always do that easily.  But I know how to try to do it.  I know how to push them and push back against them.

While all those people making money and prestige are busy injuring our educational system and forcing me to waste hours in training in an attempt to stop my evil "broadcasting", the reality of my life is that I miss my lecture because I could redirect students when they first go astray rather than waste time forming and reinforcing opinions that aren't very helpful.  Because talking is always faster than writing.  Three hours later.

106 degrees in Houston.  Hang in there air conditioner.  You can do it.  I know you can.  Please.

Twenty Minutes Not Wasted: How to Teach the Big Picture

Super great TED talk just up:




Now, I know you are going to think I am excited at the technological possibilities mentioned at the end--the ones for integrating many peoples into an Open Education experience. Or maybe you think I am worked up about the continuing relevance and power of LECTURE, even in the largest of groups. And, yes, that did totally work me up. BUT more hot than that was the wonderful teachable moment which shows to our students the relevance (that word again) of anthropology. It is so easy to add Anthropology into the mix here. Or add this into a course on Anthropology. Fundamentally, we want students to understand that the people's of the world are our window into viewing the different possibilities of the essence of an idea. What is marriage? How are differing views of its essence reckoned by the full spectrum of humanity? Way cool and, totally, usable for Distantly Learning.

Oh, and check out Michael Sandel's website at www.justiceharvard.org. He has a talk on cannibalism http://www.justiceharvard.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=8which I am off to watch. You know how we Anthropologists love a good cannibalism lecture (stereotype alert).

Teachable Moments Clips: Fun with Animals

Since we are, probably, all gearing up for another year, I thought I would share some of the useful clips I have found for Cultural classes. I think we would all agree that it takes some creativity to do an online Cultural class and I have worked rather hard at finding intro stuff that can generate new ways of thinking without overly-exoticizing or "tribalizing". I rather love this one on cowness (the meaning and consequent treatment thereof), I have it embedded in a wider discussion on ways of getting your groceries but do with it what you will:

How Americans treat their cattle: A Maasai perspective

Academic Earth: Have We All Seen This?

"Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars." All (except Anthropology. There isn't any) here.

I'm Back

It has been a couple of weeks of forced isolation for me. And I have noticed that isolation does not make for good blog posting. During the times I have to shut down and get to work, I notice I do just that. Shut down. I suppose anyone who has ever written a dissertation has done that. At some point, one emerges from one's cave and looks around bleary-eyed and tries to figure out what the rest of the world was up to.

I had lunch with a friend yesterday who has just finished up his graduate course work and was ready to begin his journey toward "the dissertation" (cue the ominous music). We compared notes on how that leaves you feeling terribly isolated, having lost out on the gossip of life. Sort of like when George Bush, Senior stared dumbfounded at the electronic price scanners at the grocery store, having missed life as the rest of us experience it. Although, one suspects any "Bush" has not experienced life as the collective "we" know it.

In my case, nothing so dramatic. I spent days in isolation building a new Distantly Learning course. Right or wrong, good or evil, Hamas or Zionism, I have put my Introduction to Archaeology course online. It debuted this week with 27 students. Their first exercise, to get them accustomed to the course, etc, etc. was to post to the Discussion Board about their trash. They seem to be enjoying, themselves and I must admit, its kind of amusing to read their posts. They seem to feel a great deal of guilt about their lack of recycling and over consumption of plastic water bottles.

Global warming, going "Green", and destroying the planet are such easy moral issues, aren't they? Its good to know that while we were denied communitas by a fumbled oath and an awkward speech at the Presidential Inauguration, we can all join in with a pure "tsk tsk" at our own water-bourne frailties.

Year-End Blogalooza at Neuroanthropology!

The Award-Winning (and fan of the prehistoric life toob) Blog, Neuroanthropology, is hosting the first annual (drum roll, please):

Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008

Details are available here. In a nutshell, anthro bloggers will be submitting blog posts in two categories: Most Popular Post (oh, jeez, its High School again--deeply embedded insecurities have torn loose--a quantitative evaluation) and My Self-Selected Best Post (oh no, a qualitative assessment, but, I love all my babies.)

If you blog, suffer alongside me and submit your choices. If you read, log onto the blog on December 31 and do what you do best.

Any votes on "Best"?

Distance Learning: the meaning of meaningless bits of flair

I recently opened a Facebook account. My daughter has, consistently, refused to allow me to do so. She thinks its a pathetic act for a woman of my age and stature. More fundamentally, I would be invading the turf and domain of another generation: hers. Its the modern day version of "you're not going to wear that. Mom?" Middle school, six years on.

I researched it, carefully, and the balance of student expectations seems to be shifting. As near as I can tell, there are more students in favor of faculty Facebook presence than against. But my consistent pet peeve is the way we treat students as a monolithic category. Anthropologists have no business making vast pronouncements about "students today". It is the sloppiest kind of scholarship, never to be tolerated in refereed journals but freely tossed about on the Internet. So, I expect some, like my daughter, will continue to find it lame while others will "friend me" enthusiastically. I admit to being thrilled to discover an old and dear friend from High School and to easily be able to stay in touch with former students. Being at a two year school means they are quickly lost to me (at least the successful ones) and I yearn for the sense of meaning in my life that comes from seeing them grow and succeed.

And, so, I have jumped aboard the Facebook train and begun the process of accessorization. Its a train ride in the sense that I am forced to go forward by the template through tunnels and mountain passes and, yet, I can rock the bling all I want. I am a fan of Karl Marx, Meyer Fortes, Evans-Pritchard, Emile Durkhem, Melville Herskovits (Go, you, NU), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Buc-ees--home of the largest collection of beaver jokes, dried dead animals, and clean restrooms in the Lone Star State. It was Archeology (without the "a") that taught me that through process comes meaning, so, I have joined the Lewis Binford group. And in a nod to the beautiful mountains that were the home to my anthropological rite of passage, that overwhelmingly, embarrassingly arrogant "thing" we call fieldwork, I have joined the travellers to Morogoro group. I am made anew, born again, defined and redefined through point and click. My fingers are tired.

And I am contemplating the meaning of participation; what we faculty often pose as "you don't get credit for showing up". Because, I think, more and more students do. And I think this is more and more evident in Web 2.0 worlds and in classes where students (of all levels of accessorization, those with flair and those without) are Distantly Learning. I have an online student who has been emailing back and forth and back and forth about her grade. We submitted final grades on Monday and she did not like hers. Seems she has had hours and hours of Distance Learning courses, earning all As and Bs. She is frustrated by her C. Embarrassed to submit it to her employer for reimbursement and, personally, frustrated with me for not recognizing her well-travelled existence, she has fought valiantly and politely with me through two weeks of emails.

I have gleaned this from our correspondence: she has been through course after course where she had been given credit for participation. And she participates. She has, actually, shocked the bejeesus out of me with her level of participation. She has posted everywhere--responding to every single Discussion Board posting of other students, giving shout-out on top of shout-out. And she has worn me out, correcting and re-directing her. Because she just doesn't "get" anthropology. Born in Scandinavia and living in Latin America, she has travelled extensively. She posted pictures of the Sami, pontificated on Susto, and cheerfully contributed in her final post (long past the whole cultural relativism discussion) that the Maasai depicted in a Tanzanian hip hop video (the video that was posted here for Blog Action Day) had barbaric (her word) cultural practices.

She was like a run away toddler, I couldn't catch. In a face-to-face class, I would have shut her down in the first week. Cut her off, moved away from her, avoided eye contact; suggested disapproval of her conclusions in strong and monkey brain-stem ways. Online, I could only chase after her hours after she ran into the street. I, actually, started worrying about the cars that might hit her. She was so BIG, posting so much--the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man, lurching like a toddler but deadly sticky. Would other students read her conclusion, pontifications, and pronouncements and get the wrong impression, learn the wrong thing, be impressed by all the travel bling, the bits of Sami flair? They couldn't know that her quiz average grade was a D. She didn't even "know" this.

Participation-A; Content Mastery-D. I am glad it was a C, so I don't have to "face" her another semester. She wore me out.

You can find, point, and click; fan this, friend that, post, upload, interact but if you are only a vacation traveller, a tourist on the Net, shallow is what you will remain. We still need to look for the deep immersion in content: for the process is not the learning of technology, it is the learning.

And in the great (narcissistic) minds think alike category, you must check out this blog post on "students today" and Teen Narcissism by Mark Bauerlein at the Chronicle of Higher Education for the psychological underpinnings of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow student. But then, that is only my opinion, perhaps yours is better, cause after all its yours. Just don't ask me for extra points for having it because it might be WRONG, idiot. (Sorry, the pent-up hostility escaped again.)

Post-Ike Blogging and Academic Clean-Up

We started back this week with an interesting solution to our loss of class time. It was about two and a half weeks, although the official time announced at one meeting was 7 and a half class hours. Other area Community Colleges are extending their calenders but we, apparently, worked out a deal with the Co-ordinating Board for Higher Education and the Southern Association to have faculty, discipline-wide, develop plans to make up the content missed through methods of their own choosing. The theory is that a course is no longer measured solely by hours met but by content mastered. Individual disciplines can choose to add extra course time but most are choosing to turn to technology and textbooks to require students to "learn on their own".

Its easier to think about the meaning of a course not being measured by time met when you have taught the Distantly Learning courses. I have already had to ponder the philosophical question: what, exactly is a course? 3 hours of credit for what? In our case, its Student Learning Outcomes (SLO's). Students must demonstrate competency in a list of concepts I wrote years ago. Its always been a goal of mine to collect everyone's Cultural Anthropology SLO's (or whatever they cal them) all over the world. What would that look like?

Well, guess my solution? Blogging. I am blogging lectures. So, even though you haven't had me around I am still blogging; I am just on the "Learning Anthropology" blog and not the "Teaching Anthropology" blog. I will probably do some cross posts but this blog is still anonymous and not known to my students, so, sshhhh.

Anyway, in an unrelated discussion, I know you will all be relieved to know that I have used my spare no power, no internet, no television, time to keep a careful watch on the skies here in Texas, both in an effort to make you all feel safer and to increase my foreign policy experience. At this time, to my knowledge, no Mexican planes have crossed into U.S. air space. Not on my watch. Nope.

Pedagogical Irony and the Illusion of Inclusion

I am on my college's "elearning task force". (We don't have committee's anymore, we have task forces which is a metaphor borrowed from the military, although I doubt any of our administrators would know or appreciate the rich irony of that--no, I have another irony in mind.). Our Dean of the Virtual College set up an asynchronous discussion forum on, ugh, BlackBoard, to review our policies (which are presented as document checklists) for our Distantly Learning courses and faculty.

Irony alert: no one is participating! We have yet to have a post from any administrator on the panel. Self Interest Alert. We have a couple of posts from a long time and retirement-aged faculty member who owns a piece of land a couple hours from campus arguing for permitting faculty to be located off-campus. And a couple of posts from librarians (who police the open lab areas and offer assistance) who continually witness groups of students taking exams together. Or people (spouses and friends) taking exams for students. Hey, in today's world that's collaborative learning. But, other than myself, that's about it. No responses to any postings. Most of my postings have been about allowing faculty at the departmental level to work out our evaluation. The model presented gives it all to an entity known as the Department Chair (but there are several departments glommed together under a Chair.) No responses to any of these few suggestions and arguments. The site has been up for 3 months now.

In the end, the administrators will make the decisions they want. But doesn't it look good that they had a discussion forum to tackle these issues? I am so proud of us. Embracing both new forms of media expression and models of inclusiveness. Cue Alanis Morisette. Unfortunately, the shadow world of appearances isn't accompanied by any true meaning. Because our emperor is buck naked. And that is definitely a nauseating thought.

What being an anthropologist means to me: apparently, it means a long post

There are times when the threads of your thoughts become tangled together in the dryer of your mind, usually wrapped around an unsuspecting button or strap of an innocent piece of clothing. (How is that for a tortured metaphor?) This is one of those messy times. And every blog I read, twists those threads into a tighter tangle.

I have been working on my Distance Learning course. Mostly trying to make myself feel better about its existence. My journey down the technology inroads to achieving this goal has frustrated me no end.

I blame the Africanist in me. I first went to Tanzania in 1985 just prior to IMF restructuring. The country had pretty much ground to a halt. No petrol, no wheat flour, no electricity, uncertain water supply--this in the capital city. Life in the villages was, obviously, much more difficult. Crops couldn't get to market and life was very, very localized. (In some cases, this made things better but that is a different discussion.) I returned again in 1986-87 for my full dissertation research during a time of IMF restructuring. And then in 1994, I returned, again, this time picking up a consultancy job with USAID and the International Red Cross conducting a "rapid assessment survey" of the condition of children orphaned by the HIV/AIDS virus. It was a transformative experience as all fieldwork experience should be. Dealing with the daily poverty and the pain and guilt it induced in me was, in many respects, more than I could handle. I came to recognize that the only way I could hope to make a difference was to teach. And so I do.

And when I teach, I believe it is my responsibility to convey the reality of a world where there are other ways of thinking and other ways of doing. In an effort to achieve that goal, I will with great happiness and gusto deconstuct American popular culture with my students to try to tease out our meanings and ways of being. But in the end, I want them to move beyond our world and embrace "the other". I want them to come to terms with a global economy which impoverishes Tanzanians. I want them to understand the frustrations of the 20 million people in the Niger Delta. I want them to understand the dangers of assuming a free election will produce a "democracy" in a country that has only know the rule of a cold-war dictator.

So, as I review the great move toward technological innovation in the classroom. I find, myself recoiling in horror. I just don't get it. Michael Wesch's youtube of his oh so forlorn students who don't read and can only become excited when engaging with their own methods of discourse drove me crazy. So many problems brought up by the brief glimpses you get of his work. I get the idea that they need motivation. But what is the line between motivation and pandering?

One of Wesch's assertions is that you can learn more by "doing" than by studying/reading/attending lecture? I certainly can't agree with that. I was barely ready for participant observation after an intensive undergraduate experience and three years of graduate course work. I can't tell if these students view participant observation as just an excuse to have a good time or they actually come to understand that its ultimate purpose is analytical. You don't learn from an experiential moment, unless, you have done the ground work. Wesch, clearly, gets it when he discusses digital ethnography but then he has done his ground work, hasn't he? What, exactly, do the students learn about anthropology? (I've seen the world sim stuff--let's let that go for now. I only have so much energy for my rant. I can tackle that one later.)

Seems I might not be the only one lamenting the loss of an expectation students put in the time to read and reflect. The Atlantic Magazine this month has a summary article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, (thanks to The World's Hottest Poli Sci Prof for the shout-out on that one), which discusses the changes to our brain when we abandon "deep reading" in favor of "power browsing". Students should be encouraged to do some deep thinking and not "pancake" processing.

Do some deep reading of Gramschi and fight the hegemonization of a capitalist agenda for education. The crime here seems to be expecting any faculty member to teach a class of 200-400 with 10 undergraduate T.A.'s. We faculty, as a collective group, should not be helping any administrator or member of the public to believe that is acceptable. I teach classes of 30. My students aren't surfing the web when we are in class. Major universities can do better and should.

And then, the Africanist in me rears its ugly head again. How many Tanzanians would, quite literally, give their right arm to be in that lecture hall? Any guesses on how much of their time would be spent on Facebook and how much time spent reading? And more: when will those American students come to understand Tanzanians? You won't find most Tanzanians posting on youtube. You are only likely to find missionaries posting videos of adorable children singing praises to God. Isn't the purpose of anthropology to expose these inequalities not reinforce a world of our own making? And youtube may be a global phenomenon but only for those in a global elite. The majority of the humans who people this planet cannot afford the luxury.

And when we turn our back on our long history of engagement with those who cannot afford youtube and when we loose the desire to engage, respectfully, with the lived experiences of all of humanity, we are losing the central focus and ethics of our discipline. I have always felt anthropology was far more than a collection of methods. I can remember being told upon declaring my undergraduate major that you became an anthropologist because of the type of person you were. My last post was about Evan-Pritchard because as I struggled with these issues, I was reminded of the ways he made that real for me. Nuer Religion (which I actually did deeply read as an undergraduate) humbled me. I no longer felt I had all the answers. Maybe "the other" had some ideas, as well. This gift of an idea led me through my fieldwork and informs every moment of my teaching practice.

Savage Minds and Open Anthropology have been crackling with the scary picture of an anthropology devoid of this focus, devoid of the ethics of respect for the other. At the same time, over at Ethnography. com , we learn that according to Foreign Policy Magazine, we are the most left-leaning academic discipline. Of course, David Horowitz has been arguing that for years. Just to annoy him further, it makes you wish Chomsky was an anthropologist--not just the linguist we anthropologists must understand.

Anyway, I say, if embracing the perspective that the lived experiences of all humans have legitimacy and deserve our compassionate understanding makes me "left" and wanting my students to come away with deeper thoughts than can be contained in a 3 minute youtube snippet makes me a dinosaur. Then I am a left-leaning dinosaur.

Podcasting the Other

So the folks at Apple have rolled out their latest endeavor called iTunes U. At first glance, it seems to be a rather extensive list of lectures, etc. on a huge array of topics. Searching Anthropology brought up not only the new AAA podcasts but also a Distance Learning Course taught by Joylin Namie at Utah Valley State College. I downloaded lecture number #1 "What is Anthropology" (which took an inordinate amount of time--but I am on the old home laptop, which has a couple of years on it) and watched a bit while chewing my mental cud about using it for my own Distance Learning course.

It seems somehow bizarre to use someone else's lectures for teaching my course. While watching the first half of the lecture, I found myself extra-sensitive to the difference between Namie's perspective and my own. In the grand scheme of things, there is little difference between us but, yet, some difference exists. And those tiny differences suddenly seemed disproportionately important. Would I be happier if I just made my own podcasts? One of my colleagues has begun to do that for those times when he must be absent from his classroom class.

So, I pulled myself out of those thoughts and tried to decide if students would actually get through the whole series. It seemed a strangely passive experience to watch her panel of students ask pat questions. Was I a bit bored because I already know it all (after all, its just the intro lecture) or would a student also find their mind wandering? Is that any different than what my students experience in class every day? Can they do just as well with reading the text on their own, after all it seems somehow faster and not that different when you factor in reading the power point slides which pop up during her lectures.

Its very early going, I mean I only got through the first lecture but still...

For such an opinionated person, I sure am having trouble forming an opinion.

Breaking News

University of Phoenix's parent company the Apollo Group reports an 11% increase in enrollment and a 14% increase in revenue for the quarter, according to the NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/business/02apollo.html?ex=1372651200&en=bf51f119eae54817&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Swell. Guess that means they are rising from the ashes of our current recession.

A Blog on Blogs

Short and sweet. An amazingly rich discussion of blogging in Archaeology magazine. The links should prove useful in any intro archy course:

http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/

I am shortly to introduce my first Distance Learning ANTH 2302: Introduction to Archaeology course and I am busy chewing my mental cud on the best way to approach the whole thing. At the moment I am overwhelmed by the vast quantity of Archaeology resources on the net. I should have known, in graduate school the archys were always the ones with all the technological savy--what with their bitnet and fat Macs. Yes, that was from the era of Devo, black leggings, and hair mousse-all things, which as I recall, archys avoided.

The Dreaded Un-American Accusation/Anthropology as Cultural Critique-Distance Learning Version

Will we ever be free of David Horowitz? The reason this blog began is to defend myself to myself. This summer I am teaching Distance Learning only. Seems the cost of gas and the lure of technology has driven all my students onto the Internet and out of the classroom. (I know, I know--the Internet is a virtual classroom, Blackboard is our savior, we can do as well online as face-to-face--more on this for another post--sarcasm is intended).

I have this little vignette posted on one of my Discussion Boards:

My own fieldwork was with a group of east African farmers in the modern nation-state of Tanzania. In my first week with them, they happily showed me around the village and carefully named off (in Swahili) all the multitude of plants surrounding us. No doubt, after several hours of this, I had a rather glazed look upon my face. I perked up when shown a coffee tree. My escorts noticed immediately my changed facial expression and wanted to know why this particular plant interested me. I told them that most Americans, myself included, drink coffee every morning but that I had never seen a coffee tree before. Within 30 seconds the entire village was discussing the strange Americans who consumed food that they had never seen before. It made me think how much we as Americans would rather not know about our food. I certainly do not want to know the details about what is in my hot dog at the ballpark. In Fast Food Nation ( a recently published book which in part inspired the film Supersize Me) we learn that the vast majority of all antibiotics given in the U.S. are given to cattle kept in unsanitary conditions awaiting slaughter for fast food restaurants. Most of us just don't want to know that. And, yet, we probably should.
I thought about that in Tanzania as I watched chickens being slaughtered by hand and my hosts laughed at the expression on my face. Once again, I was called on to explain. I could only laugh trying to explain supermarkets with Styrofoam trays of raw meat wrapped in cellophane. The assembled group of Tanzanians could not believe we Americans would eat chickens we did not personally know. My brain was busy thinking that I would much rather NOT know my chicken, particularly if I had to kill it myself. And yet, the good anthropologist inside me recognized that their way could well be healthier than ours. Freshly slaughtered and prepared chicken doesn't have time to accumulate salmonella. And who better knows the cleanliness of my own animal and hands than myself?
The AIDS epidemic has hit Africa very hard. In the very early days of condom distribution in Tanzania, many men questioned the safety of using them. They were leery of placing anything on the most intimate parts of their body that was made in a factory. Factories, for them, were a long way away and probably very unsanitary. Many development workers coming from more industrialized societies would probably find these views odd, if not outright ignorant, but given what I already knew about the way rural Tanzanians thought about their food and the world in general, their hesitation made sense to me. This is a good example of how anthropologists often think differently than other people

I have used this story for quite a few years in my face-to-face classes with great success. I posted it on my Distance Learning course as part of a longer discussion. When I ask them to reflect about how people's economic systems condition the way they see the world, I get at least one student who reads this story as an attack on America. After over 20 years of fielding this issue in the classroom, I must admit I find this the most frustrating discussion in Distance Learning. I have no physical way, through demeanour, manner, facial expression, to soften the discussion to a non-threatening level. It seems the more words I throw at the issue the more the hostility escalates. My frustration level is pretty high at this point; I mean, non-judgemental evalution is the starting point for anthropology. If I can't succeed in this discussion, where do I go from here?