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Anthro Info for High Schoolers
John Mcreery (jlm@TWICS.COM)
Mon, 19 Dec 1994 15:07:12 JST
Dear Colleagues,
I received the following message from Vicky Downs, who works as a librarian
at the American School in Japan. Any advice you'd have to offer would be
most welcome.
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Hi John,
Ruth game me your e-mail address yesterday, as I wanted to ask if you had any
advice for me regarding places to find cultural information. What I have in
mind is information accessible to high school freshmen dealing with the
indigenous cultures in areas later occupied by colonial powers. Our students
are being asked to describe the values and way of life of peoples who lived
in such areas as present day India, Indonesia, Philippines, etc. They have
discovered that lo and behold, all the books and magazines in the ASIJ library
are in English and that the points of view are essentially Western (even for
books written by Indians, Indonesians, etc.). As a result, it is hard for
them to find someone who could explain something like "suttee" in such a way
that it sounds reasonable and acceptable and maybe even virtuous, etc. By and
large books in the collection here indicate that thank goodness the Brits
occupied India if only because they brought an end to "suttee", and brought
I wonder if there might be some source (sources?) on the Internet which
could provide the information my kids need. As an anthropologist, I hope
you'll have some ideas. Any thoughts or ideas at all would be most welcome.
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If you responded like I did to th messages from the kids in Singapore, you
probably don't want a plague of queries from high schools cluttering up
the list. On the other hand, this looks like a good opportunity to promote
anthro among new generations of students who will shortly be in college.
Yours truly,
JOHN MCCREERY (JLM@TWICS.COM)
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