No room for anthropology on this STEM

Posted Oct 11, 2011 by Lindsay Peterson

Updated Oct 12, 2011 at 11:29 AM

In Gov. Rick Scott’s Florida, there is no place for courses like anthropology.

They don’t add much to Florida’s economic growth, he told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune on Monday.

If he’s going to tax people to pay for education, he said, he wants that money to go to programs that create jobs, programs in the much-mentioned STEM fields of math, science, engineering and technology.

As this debate goes forward, maybe we should be clear about what is and is not STEM.

Check out USF’s description of its anthropology program. It’s a mix of cultural, biological, archaeological and linguistic studies. (These last three sound like science to me.)

Students take their knowledge in those areas and apply it to the solution of human problems.

And what problems?

One focus of the department is on bioculture and human health, which deals with how to prevent and contain health disasters.

And how poverty and access to resources affect public health.

And how the interplay of culture and biology affect a population’s health.

Is this not science?

As you might expect, the American Anthropological Society isn’t happy about Scott’s remarks. Here’s their letter to the governor.