23rd October 2008, 04:40 PM
trowelmonkey wrote:
"There is a bigger problem though. I have noticed in the past few years that universities are starting to crank out belligerant archaeology graduates (see IfA paper on scribd) who do not listen, look and learn but only challenge every single sentence like a bunch of three year olds. I mean the very little things like, "clean your tools, please share the wheelbarrow because there isn't enough space in that corner, don't walk on that area, it hasn't been photoed...." I really think work experience on a real site would demonstrate why a site is a team effort."
Although this is slightly going off topic I wanted to weigh in on this one in particular, because I am not sure that this is the fault of universities especially.
Right now I do not work in the commercial sector, but for the last couple of years I have taken university students as part of their fieldwork experience to work on one of my sites abroad. Unfortunately, I have often had a very similar experience to what trowelmonkey describes. At first I thought this was subjective, but I have since gotten the same feedback from others.
Now, it seems that some people working in commercial archaeology think that archaeologists working in academia can't dig/ dig too slow/ never publish/ etc. (see others on this forum) and that this kind of behaviour is therefore a result of bad teaching in the field and all the universities fault.
If I can just say that I and the people I work with demand very high standards from all our staff (because we feel that its our responsibility as archaeologists and because we're being scrutinized by peer-review) and that we also work under time pressure, with limited financial resources, and often in very difficult circumstances (45 degrees in the shade on a 12 hour work day isn't exactly taking it easy).
[as a side note: while I am sure there was a lack of publication by some academics in the past, times have changed. If you don't publish your work now, you are highly unlikely to receive another grant for fieldwork until you've fully published the results of your last excavation! Plus, with the RAE this kind of stuff is also important to be put out if you want to progress career wise].
So, I don't think one can accuse universities (some perhaps, but not all) of not showing students what its like to work in the field - whether that's commercial excavation or straightforward research.
On my project I take great care in teaching students all aspects of field archaeology from excavation, recording, drawing, photography, surveying with and without total station, finds drawing to finds ID, because I know those are the skills they will need to make them valuable to employers and useful people in the field.
Despite all that, however, I've found that there are increasingly people who simply do not take pride in the simple mantra of 'a job well done' and see this as a source of motivation and inspiration. And there are increasingly people who simply think they know it all, and won't bloody listen to well-meant advice. And there is an increase in selfishness and a lack of teamwork, for sure. I have seen this a lot on my projects, but sometimes it is simply something that you can't teach!
My experience is the same as trowelmonkey describes, and I cannot help but feel that this might simply be a generational change - even if saying that makes me sound like an old crank.
One other thing while I am ranting: teaching people in the field isn't a straightforward practice either. It takes skill and I am not convinced that newbies on a site are always treated with the same respect or courtesy as old-timers. How often does it happen that a fresh graduate from a university gets the s*** jobs on site, because - well - she/he is new and first has to earn their stripes? How often are they made to feel that they might have a degree, but that that doesn't count anything and they know nothing until they have pushed X wheelbarrows, troweled X surfaces and had X pints in the pub.
Teaching skills takes patience and it takes skill - simply teaming a newbie up with an old-timer isn't always going to work!
What I am trying to say is that the impression one might get from some fresh graduates might be a reaction to the reception they encounter.
If archaeology is really what we care about we've got to stop the blame game of "it's X fault". We either work together or we're going to make the situation worse. I've never understood the hostility between academic archaeologists and commercial archaeologists in the UK.
"There is a bigger problem though. I have noticed in the past few years that universities are starting to crank out belligerant archaeology graduates (see IfA paper on scribd) who do not listen, look and learn but only challenge every single sentence like a bunch of three year olds. I mean the very little things like, "clean your tools, please share the wheelbarrow because there isn't enough space in that corner, don't walk on that area, it hasn't been photoed...." I really think work experience on a real site would demonstrate why a site is a team effort."
Although this is slightly going off topic I wanted to weigh in on this one in particular, because I am not sure that this is the fault of universities especially.
Right now I do not work in the commercial sector, but for the last couple of years I have taken university students as part of their fieldwork experience to work on one of my sites abroad. Unfortunately, I have often had a very similar experience to what trowelmonkey describes. At first I thought this was subjective, but I have since gotten the same feedback from others.
Now, it seems that some people working in commercial archaeology think that archaeologists working in academia can't dig/ dig too slow/ never publish/ etc. (see others on this forum) and that this kind of behaviour is therefore a result of bad teaching in the field and all the universities fault.
If I can just say that I and the people I work with demand very high standards from all our staff (because we feel that its our responsibility as archaeologists and because we're being scrutinized by peer-review) and that we also work under time pressure, with limited financial resources, and often in very difficult circumstances (45 degrees in the shade on a 12 hour work day isn't exactly taking it easy).
[as a side note: while I am sure there was a lack of publication by some academics in the past, times have changed. If you don't publish your work now, you are highly unlikely to receive another grant for fieldwork until you've fully published the results of your last excavation! Plus, with the RAE this kind of stuff is also important to be put out if you want to progress career wise].
So, I don't think one can accuse universities (some perhaps, but not all) of not showing students what its like to work in the field - whether that's commercial excavation or straightforward research.
On my project I take great care in teaching students all aspects of field archaeology from excavation, recording, drawing, photography, surveying with and without total station, finds drawing to finds ID, because I know those are the skills they will need to make them valuable to employers and useful people in the field.
Despite all that, however, I've found that there are increasingly people who simply do not take pride in the simple mantra of 'a job well done' and see this as a source of motivation and inspiration. And there are increasingly people who simply think they know it all, and won't bloody listen to well-meant advice. And there is an increase in selfishness and a lack of teamwork, for sure. I have seen this a lot on my projects, but sometimes it is simply something that you can't teach!
My experience is the same as trowelmonkey describes, and I cannot help but feel that this might simply be a generational change - even if saying that makes me sound like an old crank.
One other thing while I am ranting: teaching people in the field isn't a straightforward practice either. It takes skill and I am not convinced that newbies on a site are always treated with the same respect or courtesy as old-timers. How often does it happen that a fresh graduate from a university gets the s*** jobs on site, because - well - she/he is new and first has to earn their stripes? How often are they made to feel that they might have a degree, but that that doesn't count anything and they know nothing until they have pushed X wheelbarrows, troweled X surfaces and had X pints in the pub.
Teaching skills takes patience and it takes skill - simply teaming a newbie up with an old-timer isn't always going to work!
What I am trying to say is that the impression one might get from some fresh graduates might be a reaction to the reception they encounter.
If archaeology is really what we care about we've got to stop the blame game of "it's X fault". We either work together or we're going to make the situation worse. I've never understood the hostility between academic archaeologists and commercial archaeologists in the UK.