Public Engagement and Education: Developing and Fostering Stewardship for an Archaeological Future

By Berghahn Books

The world’s collective archaeological heritage is threatened by war, development, poverty, climate change, and ignorance. To protect our collective past, archaeologists must involve the general public through interpersonal experiences that develop an interest in the field at a young age and foster that interest throughout a person’s life. Contributors to this volume share effective approaches for engaging and educating learners of all ages about archaeology and how one can encourage them to become stewards of the past. They offer applied examples that are not bound to specific geographies or cultures, but rather, are approaches that can be implemented almost anywhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Feb 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789201451

Book preview

PART I

INSPIRING AND DEVELOPING AN INTEREST IN THE PAST

CHAPTER 1

Schools and Public Archaeology

Igniting a Commitment to Heritage Preservation

Charles S. White

This chapter explores the potential for public schools to support and advance understanding of our heritage, embracing both common and diverse narratives, and to promote an appreciation for the need to preserve the touchstones of heritage that are historical and archaeological treasures. The route to seizing those opportunities requires, of course, that we can gain entry into the schools, no small challenge with an overcrowded curriculum and an emphasis on testing. Choosing productive curriculum entry and anchor points can increase the odds of success, building networks of like-minded scholars, educators, and communities that are connected physically and intellectually to heritage resources worthy of preservation.

Schools and Heritage Preservation: A Rationale

At the height of the culture wars in the 1980s and 1990s, scholars and opinion leaders expressed deep concern about the state of history teaching and learning in the United States. The issue spanned quantity, quality, and ideology. The Bradley Commission on History in the Schools published an influential book titled Historical Literacy: The Case for History in American Education (Gagnon and Bradley Commission on History in the Schools 1991). In that volume, historians articulated a rationale for history education that, I would suggest, animates our efforts to promote heritage preservation. One of the historians, William H. McNeil, observes:

Historical knowledge is no more and no less than carefully and critically constructed collective memory. As such, it can make us both wiser in our public choices and more richly human in our private lives … Studying alien religious beliefs, strange customs, diverse family patterns, and vanished social structures show how differently various human groups have tried to cope with the world around them. Broadening our humanity and extending our sensibilities by recognizing sameness and difference throughout the recorded past is therefore an important reason for studying history, and especially the history of people far away and long ago. For we can know ourselves only by knowing how we resemble and how we differ from others. Acquaintance with the human past is the only way to such self-knowledge. (1991, 103, 110)

The institution of public schooling carries a special responsibility to help construct a collective memory, carefully and critically, as pluribus and unum, over years of serious study and exploration. This was clearly understood by leaders like Thomas Jefferson who worked earnestly in the eighteenth century to establish free, public education to fortify the new republic and its guiding principles: History by apprising [youth] of the past will enable them to judge of the future (Jefferson 1984, 274). Horace Mann and the common school movement advanced those efforts in Massachusetts and elsewhere in the nineteenth century (Tyack 1967). I should offer a clarification, however, concerning what historians typically reference as worthy sources of historical knowledge. The raw material for our collective memory need not be limited to the written record; rather, it should embrace a broad range of sources, both two-dimensional (maps, photographs, paintings) and three-dimensional (houses, landscapes, and the artifacts brought to light through the labors of archaeologists). Indeed, the products of archaeological research and outreach are the sparks that ignite our memories, as individuals and as a society. What a loss we bear, then, when we hear about archaeological sites and artifacts that are no longer available to us, whether through theft, deliberate destruction, or indifference and neglect.

Lest there be any doubt concerning the term knowledge in this chapter, let me add that I contemplate more than a collection of facts. The means of creating knowledge—cognitive skills and disciplinary procedures must be addressed as well. Particularly relevant for this chapter’s topic is also the less tangible domain of values and moral commitments. These include an appreciation for history and its interpretation, as well as the need to preserve both heritage and the artifacts through which we come to learn about heritage. In schools, we aim to help students build habits of the head, hand, and heart, embracing the tri-partite dimensions of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Fostering heritage and its preservation will require us to address this curricular triptych as we approach the schools.

Getting in the Door

For American schools today, scores of worthy goals far exceed the supply of time and resources. Since the days of Jefferson and Mann, we have expected schools to address more and more of society’s needs, and schools are hard-pressed to keep pace with these demands. As a result, priorities are set and some demands are privileged over others. The accountability demands reflected in high-stakes testing and teacher evaluation tied to test scores often generate resistance to any added demands, however worthy. Successful initiatives in education help schools and teachers to fulfill these responsibilities in effective and compelling ways.

Entre to the School: Curriculum, Standards, and Accountability

For decades, waves of anxiety about the nation’s competitiveness have been met with calls for greater mastery of subject matter by our students. Since A Nation at Risk (United States National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983) sounded an alarm about the decline of America’s education system compared to other nations, national policy makers commissioned a collection of voluntary national content standards in the early 1990s. These influenced a parallel effort at the state level. Through a variety of carrot-and-stick federal financial incentives, the states also adopted testing programs to measure progress toward meeting rigorous benchmarks, primarily in reading, writing, and mathematics, as well as for developing higher-level thinking (inquiry/problem-solving and critical thinking). High-stakes tests administered in high school figure prominently in determining whether a student qualifies for a high school diploma.

Since 2010, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in mathematics and English language arts/literacy have guided changes in content and skill requirements (and testing programs) in more than forty states and the District of Columbia. The Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association Best Practices Center initiated CCSS development in 2009 and issued the final product the following year (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers 2010).¹ More recently, the National Council for the Social Studies released The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards (2013), which addresses Common Core expectations while maintaining focus on subject matter and thinking-skills goals in history/social science school curriculum. Most distinctively, though, the C3 standards are centered on an inquiry arc that spans the study of discipline-based subject matter (see Figure 1.1).

The implementation of standards and high-stakes testing has generated some unintended consequences for the nation’s schools. The elementary curriculum has become so crowded and test driven that there is a growing backlash against reduced recess time and increased homework time (Bennett and Kalish 2006; Holland, Sisson, and Abeles 2015; Muto 2015). Tests that the government mandates as measures of student-teacher-school quality focus primarily on literacy and numeracy. For that reason, other subject areas beyond reading, writing, and mathematics have become marginalized with respect to instructional time and perceived value (Beddoes, Prusak, and Hall 2014; Cawelti 2006; NASBE Study Group on the Lost Curriculum 2003; Risinger 2012).

The good news is that subject matter that is aligned to curriculum and content standards and accountability demands has a good chance of being embraced by schools. Advocates for innovative subject matter should be seeking as many school curriculum connections as possible. Clearly, archaeology intersects with the sciences and should continue to seek opportunities to ally with the precollege science curriculum. At the secondary school level, these typically include physical/earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics; at the elementary level, general science. However, archaeology is also crucial to the humanities and social sciences. Note, for example, how the National Council for the Social Studies defines its curriculum domain:

Figure 1.1. C3 Framework (National Council for the Social Studies 2013, 12; used with permission).

Social studies is the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence. Within the school program, social studies provides coordinated, systematic study drawing upon such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology, as well as appropriate content from the humanities, mathematics, and natural sciences. The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world. (Anderson 1993,