Techniques for Teaching Anthropology to Social Work Students

Abstract

Social work students come to their education expressing the desire to "do good and help people." Often they have chosen their undergraduate major in social work despite the objections and cynicism of family and friends. After teaching undergraduate social work since 1972, I have come to see my students as generally courageous people who are willing, after relatively little education, to tackle some of the most pressing contemporary issues, including child abuse, the impact of crime, addictions, poverty, homelessness, and hunger. For the past nine years, I have tried to enhance my students' abilities to be effective by introducing an anthropological perspective within the social work courses. I help them discover their clients' world view by reading and utilizing ethnographic field methods. I teach them some beginning evaluation techniques so that they can critique the effectiveness of the social agencies and social policies with which they work. Perhaps most importantly, my own direct practice methods have shifted toward using ethnographic methods to understand the person with whom I am working in the field. Social work professors, like anthropologists, tend to give numerous examples from the field which appear to have a tremendous influence on the way students come to understand the discipline.