Watch Your Language (and Culture)
Former Anthropology Professor Attacks Course Content; Department Head Answers
Paul McDowell writes: I am a former anthropology instructor at Santa Barbara City College, teaching among other courses anthropological linguistics that I successfully proposed in 2005 and taught until 2015. Thus I observed firsthand the dumbing down of the anthropology curriculum under the current head, Phyllisa Eisentraut. I included descriptive linguistics, which covered the basics. Under Dr. Eisentraut’s direction, the course was revised to eliminate the basics and to provide a superficial link between language and culture. This illustrates a general pattern, observed by Henry Giroux, of the elimination of basic academic courses in favor of the less demanding vocational courses. In light of the firing of Professor Mark McIntire, the taxpaying public should give SBCC a hard look.
I met Dr. Michael Shermer many years ago, shortly after he founded Skeptic, and contributed a couple of articles about the naïve acceptance of creationism by the general public. His magazine is an important contribution to counter the decline of academic standards evident throughout schools and colleges.
Having been an adjunct instructor at SBCC from 2000 to 2016 (and I sat at the Academic Senate at the same time as Dr. Raeanne Napoleon), my anthropological linguistics course drew an enrollment of 50 students in 2012 and remained at that level to 2015, drawing mostly Chinese students. Among others, it included an introduction to descriptive linguistics, which forms the basics of the discipline.
