Quote:quote:Originally posted by I F Lostmetrowel
Ok I am going to play devils advocate here- these are thoughts rather than set views of opinion- and I apologise for the length of the post.
I grew up in an ethnically diverse part of the UK. Classes had a mix of kids whose parents came over in the 50s/60s. When it came to options for GCSE all but two opted out of history as they said it was not relevant to them as it was not covering their area of interest- ie where they came from. The two that kept up history to A-Level only wanted to do it as it was required for degree entry I think for law. How can we make people more interested in history they see as not relevant to them?
David Lammy addressed this very point in a recent address. Yes the answer is to review the content of the history curriculum. Everyone has a history and has a right to knowledge and understanding of their past. This might require a wider ranging examination of our common past i.e empire, imperialism, religious diversity, than exists at present. The curriculum might also include study of the process of history and the methodology of historical and archaeological research, common themes to everyone's history. Likewise archaeology and museums should be broader in their research agendas, collection policies, exhibitions and publications. Institutions that are to any degree funded by the tax-payer have a particular responsibility in this area.
Archaeolgy having no formal entry qualification level is one of the issues that was recently raised in a debate I attended. This was felt to be making it difficult for archaeology to be taken seriously as a profession rather than a bunch of educated/interested amateurs. There is still to much of the 'oh you do this for a living' in archaeology as peolple do not percieve it as a career.
If archaeology is to adopt formal entry qualifications, it should do so on the proviso that there is no bar to access to courses providing those qualifications from anyone in any sector of society. I was suggesting that at the moment there is no academic hindrance to a person from any racial or cultural background getting involved in archaeology because there are no formal entry qualifications. Not that qualifications are
per se a bad thing.
I would be intrigued to know what kind of jobs we could advertise in the job centre. I will suggest one argument- digging jobs- well doesn't this undermine the whole idea of a profession and make for the case that any one can dig a hole? As someone running commercial sites the pressure for getting the job done ASAP often does not allow the time for intensive training. It is already becoming a problem with graduates in archaeology as many have now come through a degree without going on a training dig as the uni's rarely run them these days.
Last week there was a 3 week 'trainee' finds processing post, with full training provided, advertised on BAJR at ?245 per week. The advert suggested that the post might interest an archaeology student. It might also interest anyone of reasonable intelligence who lived close to the place of work and might be able to understand what they were being trained in.
Myself, like a lot of archaeologists still working, came into archaeology in the early 80's through an advert in the job centre. Some people say (even nowadays) that the best thing that ever happened to UK archaeology was the input of 'job-centre' archaeologists at that time.
Your point about archaeology graduates being unskilled in the finer arts of professional arcaheology has been discussed on this site for the last couple of months. I am pretty sure that most new graduates, in archaeology or any other subject, visit the job-centre at some time. And it's probably not to sneer at people looking for interesting work, that doesn't involve shelf-stacking, chicken processing plants or call centres.
I am not adverse to any one working in archaeology but my experiance sugests that there is a genuine lack of interest amongst immigrant/ethnic people in the history/archaeology of the UK. If archaeology is aiming to move forward and compete in the commercial world we need to lose the 'amateur' image and be taken seriously. If we are to get more of a diverse base in to archaeology I think we have to stimulate interest at an early age- in school. The issue of people clinging to their ethnic identity is one of the reasons surely that the immigration laws have now added a course in histoy and english as compulsory? Many kids I went to school with parents did not speak or spoke little English. This is perhaps the area to address?
I don't think that it is necessarily incompatible for a person to have pride in their cultural heritage, an interest in their racial ancestry and be employed as an archaeologist in the UK. Lots of UK born Egyptologists have an interest in the archaeological past of a nation some distance from their own cultural and racial background. I think the issue of widening the curriculum to include study of the process of history, the methodology of historical and archaeological research and common themes in history has been addressed.
What is interesting in this discussion is that it really doesn't take much thought to be able to identify many of the reasons why archaeology as a profession does not have as wide or varied a demographic make-up as society in general. I think the challenge is not just to identify the problem, but address the solution.
We should also be having this discussion in those area of UK archaeology which have a greater tradition of supporting the amateur side of archaeology, such as the CBA and perhaps the pages of Current Archaeology. I don't see that happening at the moment. David Lammy's analysis of the problem as 'If you're not involved in the answer, you're part of the problem' may equally apply to local archaeological groups, county societies and national bodies, as it does to professional archaeologists.
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