More on why anthropology matters

Rex, at Savage Minds, makes some good points:

Education for citizenship is a unique challenge because the world is a uncertain place, and solving the problems we face as a country is not like learning a recipe or performing rote work….Anthropology is central to a liberal arts education for several reasons, the least of which is the empirical record of human behavioral diversity it provides and the way our unique fieldwork method cultivates the researcher’s ability to understand and imagine human life. But really, the problem is not proving that anthropology is worthwhile, it is helping people understand that our job as educators is to make human beings, not workers.

It is not long, and the whole piece is worth a read.

About Adam Van Arsdale

I am biological anthropologist with a specialization in paleoanthropology. My research focuses on the pattern of evolutionary change in humans over the past two million years, with an emphasis on the early evolution and dispersal of our genus, Homo. My work spans a number of areas including comparative anatomy, genetics and demography.
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