EPISODES OF ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE TEACHING OF ANTHROPOLOGY

In addition to the many new challenges facing the teachers of anthropo logy, an old one persists: how are we to deal with those of our studen ts who procrastinate, who do not keep up with their reading and writin g assignments in a timely manner? This paper suggests assigning multip le, short oral and written assignments as a general solution to this p roblem, arguing that this procedure can be followed without a substant ial increase in the work of professors who normally assign a single pa per due at the end of term. Increasing the number of episodes of accou ntability not only engages the students in their course work-it has th e same salutary effect on the professor.