7th September 2005, 01:14 PM
I agree that the opportunity to attend university should be afforded to all, although I do find it irksome occasionally because my first degree has become devalued by being less rare and so I felt I had to do a masters and now I feel I have to do the PhD to stay ahead of the game.
Degrees are a benchmark. They indicate a certain standard of education and it is usually assumed that you are an intelligent human being if you have one. When recruiting staff, they are used as an indicator that the applicant has the mental faculties required to undertake the job, but they do not guarantee it. They do not tell you whether the applicant is willing to do the hard physical work required on site, nor do they indicate whether the applicant can actually apply their learning to the fieldwork. Only practical experience will tell you that.
The problem with an all-encompassing attitude that states that all staff should have a degree in archaeology is that those degrees can vary widely according to which modules are taken and which universities were attended. All archaeology degrees are not equal. In theory, people should be able to transfer the techniques and thought processes associated with their chosen modules to other areas, but this is not always the case; they can't think "outside the box". An argument could then also be made for people with degrees in other disciplines being able to apply the analytical techniques they have learned in those disciplines to archaeology and thus creating a more vibrant academic debate (e.g. an Eng Lit graduate!
). After all, archaeological theory feeds off other disciplines (e.g. Hodder's ideas about hermeneutics). So how far do you take it?
I still maintain, as I have stated previously, that people should ideally work in the field for a couple of years before doing their archaeology degree. I think they will get more from it in terms of applying the theoretical knowledge to what they know of the practical fieldwork. Also it ought to weed out those who think that archaeology is a doss degree and only do it so that they can get a degree.
Cheers,
Eggbasket
Eggy by name, eggy by nature
Degrees are a benchmark. They indicate a certain standard of education and it is usually assumed that you are an intelligent human being if you have one. When recruiting staff, they are used as an indicator that the applicant has the mental faculties required to undertake the job, but they do not guarantee it. They do not tell you whether the applicant is willing to do the hard physical work required on site, nor do they indicate whether the applicant can actually apply their learning to the fieldwork. Only practical experience will tell you that.
The problem with an all-encompassing attitude that states that all staff should have a degree in archaeology is that those degrees can vary widely according to which modules are taken and which universities were attended. All archaeology degrees are not equal. In theory, people should be able to transfer the techniques and thought processes associated with their chosen modules to other areas, but this is not always the case; they can't think "outside the box". An argument could then also be made for people with degrees in other disciplines being able to apply the analytical techniques they have learned in those disciplines to archaeology and thus creating a more vibrant academic debate (e.g. an Eng Lit graduate!
). After all, archaeological theory feeds off other disciplines (e.g. Hodder's ideas about hermeneutics). So how far do you take it?I still maintain, as I have stated previously, that people should ideally work in the field for a couple of years before doing their archaeology degree. I think they will get more from it in terms of applying the theoretical knowledge to what they know of the practical fieldwork. Also it ought to weed out those who think that archaeology is a doss degree and only do it so that they can get a degree.
Cheers,
Eggbasket
Eggy by name, eggy by nature