**TEACHING *WITH* ARCHAEOLOGY: AN ARIZONA PROGRAM**

A.E. (Gene) Rogge

**Introduction**

As we enter the last decade of this century, archaeologists find
themselves in a crisis. The archaeological sites we study are
disappearing because of intentional looting and vandalism, myriad types
of development, inadvertent damage, and benign neglect. Although the
parameters of the crisis are not easy to specify, it is clear that we
must enlist the aid of many nonprofessionals if we are to stem the loss
of our primary database. We need large, vocal, archaeology advocacy
groups analogous to the many environmental groups that have organized
over concern about threats to our natural environment. That means we
need to educate more people about the values of archaeological research
and the perspective it provides on our modern lives.

Coincidentally, the schools of our nation also find themselves in a
crisis of performance, public confidence, and relevance to students
(National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983). Public perception
of the significance of the educational crisis far outweighs concerns
over vanishing archaeological resources, which are not widely
appreciated. When a third of the students in your state\'s public school
system are not graduating from high school and more than 50 percent of
the teachers will burnout and leave the profession within five years, it
is difficult to get much concern focused on the values of archaeology.
But by casting our archaeological curriculum materials in a format that
is relevant to the educational crisis, we clearly enhance our chances of
introducing some archaeological concepts to a broader audience of
precollege students, who in turn can help us address our own
archaeological crisis. If the current generation of school-age children
grows up with a truer sense of what archaeology is all about and comes
to appreciate the informational and heritage values embodied in
archaeological resources, they are bound to be stronger advocates for
preservation of archaeological sites in years to come.

Precollege teaching of archaeology, and more generally anthropology (its
mother discipline in the United States), has been an area of research
and development for at least three decades. Interest continues today
(see for example, Holms and Higgins 1985, Selig and Higgins 1986) and is
the focus of a 4-year task force formed by the American Anthropological
Association in 1988 (Erickson 1989). However, the major efforts of the
1960\'s left no lasting results when the federal funding for such
programs disappeared in the 1970\'s. The valuable curriculum materials
developed by those efforts have been characterized as \"curious remains
from another time\" (Rice 1986:6).

Injecting some anthropology and archaeology into precollege classrooms
faces numerous challenges. In this article I describe how one group of
volunteers, the Archaeology for the Schools Committee of the Arizona
Archaeological Council has addressed this challenge. The Council is a
group of about 150 professional, student, and avocational archaeologists
with active interests in public archaeology. The Schools Committee has
been in existence about 5 years and has averaged about 10 active members
(about 10 additional sympathetic corresponding members have promoted our
goals in their individual corners of the state but have not been able to
participate actively in committee meetings and projects). Committee
members include professional archaeologists working for universities,
museums, federal and state agencies, and private consulting firms. More
importantly, classroom teachers and museum educators have been recruited
to serve on the committee. For more specific information about the goals
of the committee and the history of its activities see Rogge and Bell
(1988).

Our experience reflects both what dedicated volunteers can and cannot
accomplish. Our efforts are small scale and not at all comparable to the
major curriculum development projects of the 1960\'s. Rather than
promoting the teaching of full-blown courses in archaeology and
anthropology, we characterize our more modest goal as encouraging
teachers to teach [with]{.underline} archaeology rather than teaching
archaeology [per se]{.underline}. We promote the introduction of some
archaeological concepts through the use of supplemental materials that
can be used to support, reinforce, and extend the required curriculum.

**The Classroom Context**

The first requirement for promoting archaeology in precollege classrooms
is the acknowledgment that this is a worthwhile goal. This may seem
simple but the fact that elementary and secondary schools have been
largely ignored by archaeologists suggests otherwise. Undoubtedly, this
stems in part from the lack of professional rewards for anyone teaching
archaeology at the precollege level. There are also concerns on the part
of both teachers and archaeologists that somehow archaeology is not
quite appropriate at the precollege level. It is, after all, a rather
marginal, arcane discipline and can be a source of conflict with the
Eurocentric perspective on American history that is typically taught as
part of the core curriculum in our schools (see Kehoe 1989). Some
archaeologists also worry that a little information can be dangerous and
could create a new generation of looters and vandals. So the decision to
promote archaeology at the precollege level should be made in conscious
recognition of the contextual challenges of the precollege classroom.

Once a decision has been made to become involved with school systems,
there are basically two strategies for working toward that goal:

\- a grass roots, bottom-up approach, or

\- a top-down imposition of new requirements

Our committee has explored both. One of our first activities was to
prepare an eight-page packet for teachers. It included a number of short
supplemental classroom activities and a summary of the state\'s
prehistory. We raised funds for mailing a copy to almost every one of
the almost one thousand schools in the state. The mailing was
coordinated with the statewide celebration of Archaeology Week in 1986
and we expected a substantial return of the mail-back form we included
for comments, suggestions, and requests for further information. To say
the least, we were disappointed that our brightly colored packet
generated only about a dozen inquiries.

Our analysis of the experience taught us that:

\- teachers are typically overwhelmed with mandated curriculum
requirements

\- the best curriculum material in the world will not sell itself and
teachers receive lots of unsolicited supplemental educational materials

\- personal contact is an essential ingredient for successful outreach

Our response was probably predictable and not particularly well thought
out. We initiated contacts with the state Department of Education to
explore the possibility of mandating the teaching of some archaeology,
perhaps in conjunction with the course on state history that is required
for all fourth graders. We received encouragement, help in identifying
other groups with similar interests, and a polite refusal to impose any
more top down requirements. Clearly the Department has more pressing
priorities such as basic literacy, drug prevention programs, and sex
education. We concluded that archaeology would have to be adopted on its
own merits.

Many of our committee members regularly make presentations to
classrooms, but we were not satisfied with the scope of this strategy,
It would never get our message through to more than a minuscule
percentage of the more than half a million elementary and secondary
students in the Arizona public school system. We decided that an
alternative strategy worth pursuing was to enlist the assistance of
classroom teachers who could multiply our efforts by each spreading the
archaeological message to perhaps 25 to 30 or more students per year.

**Working with Teachers**

With the advice and assistance of the teachers and educators on our
committee, we developed a weekend workshop for teachers. The workshop
includes a fast-paced 40-minute slide lecture that introduces
archaeology as a scientific, anthropologically based study of the past,
and summarizes the culture history of the American Southwest (the
presentation has subsequently been converted to videotape format to
facilitate broader use in other contexts). Teachers are then divided
into small work groups that spend one-half to one-hour blocks of time
participating in various types of hands-on activities that we developed
or adapted from other curriculum materials we had identified. Lesson
plans have been prepared in formats that teachers are used to and the
workshop participants are encouraged to adapt the activities for
presentation in their own classrooms. The activities include:

\- Trowel It - a dig-in-a-box activity

\- Garbage Can Archaeology - an activity for exploring the concept of
stratigraphy, artifact interpretation, and hypothesis testing

\- Culture History Mystery - an examination of how artifacts reflect
changing adaptations and lifestyles

\- Culture Universals - an exploration of the concept of culture and
commonalities among all cultural groups

\- Dating Methods - a review of relative and chronometric techniques for
determining how old something is

\- Simulating Prehistoric Pottery - an investigation of ceramic
technology and the implications of ceramic variability

Our workshops typically close with a session focused on preservation
legislation and discussion of some aspect of local on-going research
projects.

We have presented our workshop five times during the last three years
and it has also stimulated a couple of similar spin-off programs.
Through these efforts approximately two hundred teachers have been
introduced to supplemental archaeology curriculum materials. This is on
the order of only one percent of all the precollege teachers in the
state. Although we have yet to meet the challenge of spreading our
message very far and fast, we have learned several things through this
experience.

Few teachers have ever been exposed to archaeology courses and most will
not be interested in or feel qualified to teach archeology *per se*. Our
challenge is to quickly educate them to some basic concepts so that they
feel comfortable in presenting our materials as supplemental
augmentations and extensions of aspects of the mandated curriculum.

Teachers must perceive the archaeology materials to be relevant.
Archaeology is almost inherently intriguing and can often stimulate the
interests of unmotivated students. Additionally, archaeology is very
amenable to hands-on activities that encourage student participation and
retention of information well beyond the 10 percent rate typical of text
book driven presentations (see Bruner 1963, Clark 1986, Wonder and
Donovan 1984). Archaeology is also ideally suited for integrating
artificially compartmentalized subjects, and encouraging cooperative
learning\--both of which are currently recognized as educational goals.
A California high school teacher argues that some of the spin-off
benefits of archaeological activities include realistic exposure to
scientific methods, encouragement of personal involvement and social
interaction, and maturation of reflective thinking (Onderdonk 1986). One
Tucson teacher has told us that an archaeology unit involving gridding
and plotting of artifacts has improved her students\' scores on standard
skills tests. These types of reactions from their peers and testimonials
from other teachers who have experimented with archaeology (for example,
Carroll 1987, Catalina 1983, Cotter 1979, Dyer 1983, Passe and Passe
1985, Watts 1985) influence teachers more than any pitch made by
archaeologists.

Teachers operate within their own reward system and are unlikely to
participate in our workshops unless they perceive some direct benefits.
We work with local school districts to make arrangements for in-service
credit because such credits are relevant rewards for teachers in
maintaining and advancing their careers. Nevertheless, we are
experiencing difficulty in filling our workshops and obviously have to
become more effective at marketing our workshops. Personal contacts with
teachers seems to be essential to effective recruitment.

Through small workshop fees and proceeds from sale of books, our
workshops are paying for themselves as long as the volunteer efforts of
the presenters continue. But the workshops take substantial effort and
clearly a group of 10 volunteers can never hope to present workshops to
more than a small fraction of the teachers in our state. We must also
realize that most archaeologists are only avocational educators at best
and need the expertise and experience of trained curriculum developers
and teachers. Institutional support in terms of full-time personnel and
funding, such as the program developed by the Toronto School Board, is
essential if any outreach effort to the schools is ever going to have a
broad impact (Smardz and Hooge 1989, also see Smartz this volume for
further discussion of the Toronto program).

**Archaeological Literacy**

The current educational crisis has been recognized as a challenge and
opportunity by several special interest groups. \"Literacy\" has become
a theme of the crisis since Eric Hirsch (1987) first challenged schools
to produce culturally literate citizens. At first glance this seems like
a goal remarkably compatible with archaeology and its mother discipline
anthropology, but a reading of Hirsch\'s book quickly reveals that his
goal is to simply enculturate students into our own culture. The
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1989) has echoed
Hirsch\'s theme by initiating a program to achieve a \"scientifically
literate\" population by 2061, the year Comet Halley will return.
Recently historians, have launched a new program to produce
\"historically literate\" students (Gagnon 1989). The challenge of
producing \"archaeologically literate\" citizens thus faces stiff
competition for teacher interest and time.

Historians have recently benefitted from Billy Joel\'s hit song (We
Didn\'t Start the Fire), which promotes the relevance of their
discipline. Scholastic, Inc. and CBS records are distributing 40,000
free copies of a tape of the song along with an interview with Joel and
other materials for classroom use. Science education has also received
considerable attention by the media, including a recent cover story for
[Newsweek]{.underline} (April 9, 1990). We archaeologists have the
singularly popular Indiana Jones movies to promote interest in our
discipline, but the image portrayed in those movies is off-base.

We have come to realize that our committee\'s activities in Arizona are
not an isolated case. Other groups in numerous states (such as Colorado,
Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Ohio, South
Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Utah) and in
Canada have produced a variety of curriculum materials and are pursuing
a variety of approaches. (see Rogge and Bell 1989 for a listing of some
of the materials prepared by these groups, also see McNutt, Hawkins this
volume for further discussion of school curriculum materials). It seems
clear that the level of interest in archaeological education outreach is
growing across the country, and an archaeologically literate citizenry
is an achievable goal.

**Conclusion**

My basic conclusion is that we must recognize the perceived marginality
of our discipline, hone our themes for archaeological literacy to the
essential core implications of our research, and develop an effective
delivery system that combines local personal contact with locally
relevant material and national coordination. In our current enthusiasm,
we could work to prepare top quality curriculum materials, such as those
prepared in the 1960s, but unless we implement an on-going system to
effectively promote and deliver these materials, they will soon be
forgotten.

The best model we have identified for developing and delivering
supplemental materials is that provided by environmental protection
proponents, who are far ahead of archaeologists. The level of their
activities is such that it has led to the creation of a [Journal of
Environmental Education]{.underline}. We are still at the newsletter
stage (for example, [Anthro Notes]{.underline} produced by the
Smithsonian Institution, [Teaching Anthropology Newsletter]{.underline}
published by Saint Mary\'s University in Halifax, [Heritage Education
Quarterly]{.underline} from the Preservation and Library Resource Center
in Madison, Georgia, [Archaeology and Education]{.underline} that was
recently launched by the Toronto Board of Education, and the new
[Archaeology and Public Education]{.underline} newsletter of the Society
for American Archaeology, Committee on Public Education.

One of the best models for outreach that we have identified is [Project
Wild]{.underline}, a program of supplemental elementary and secondary
environmental curriculum that is disseminated through workshops in
almost every state in the nation, parts of Canada, and is being
introduced into India (Western Regional Environmental Education Council
1988). The initial materials (a volume of activities for elementary use
and another for secondary levels) were developed over a three year
period in the early 1980\'s with funding (on the order of a quarter
million dollars) and cooperation of state game and fish agencies and
departments of education throughout the western United States (Charles
1988). Today, a self-sustaining organization with a national director
continues to guide a nationwide network of cooperating organizations and
promote the program. The materials are made available to teachers
through weekend workshops, which are promoted by various local
organizations in each state. Approximately five percent of all the
teachers in the country have participated to date (Project Wild 1988).
This is an enviable record archaeologist should work to emulate.

Our Archaeology for the Schools Committee demonstrates that volunteers
can accomplish a great deal working at the state level, but I suggest
the efforts in Arizona and other parts of the country need to be
substantially increased. We need some existing or new organization to
take on the challenge of national coordination. If other disciplines can
do it, so can archaeologists. Nevertheless, I realize that a nationally
coordinated program is not likely to happen very soon. In the meantime,
I urge all archaeologists to pursue, or at least support, some form of
local or regional public education outreach. Even individual
archaeologists working with one teacher or one classroom should not be
daunted by the challenge. Individual classroom presentations are still
one of our most effective grassroots approaches to outreach.

**References Cited**

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Bruner, J. (1963) [The Process of Education]{.underline}. Vintage, New
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Carroll, R.F. (1987) Schoolyard Archaeology. [Social Studies
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Catalina, L.S. (1983) Digging into Hometown History. [Cobblestone
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Charles, C. (1988) Summary of Research Findings on Project Wild. [North
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Clark, B. (1986) [Optimizing Learning: The Integrative Education Model
in the Classroom]{.underline}. Merrill, Columbus, Ohio.

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