The Zookeeper in the Classroom

"We don't need no education,

We don't need no thought control.

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teachers leave them kids alone."

- Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2

I've increasingly been interested in the idea, shared by Dr. Terry Maple in his Professor in the Zoo, of working to make zoos more scientific, data-driven organizations.  I think that there is a lot to be said for the value of working more closely with academia, pursuing research, and publishing in journals, such as Zoo Biology and International Zoo Yearbook.  I feel like zoos and aquariums should invest in the education of their staffs, offering constant opportunities for professional development, encourage research, and, if possible, provide support for those pursuing higher education.

As far as I can tell, based on my experiences, there are two major hurdles to accomplishing these goals.  One, as always, is money.  The second is the zookeepers.

Over the years, I've noticed a strong undercurrent of anti-intellectualism running through some zookeeper circles.   It's a strong sentiment that "book learning" and "school smarts" is way, way overrated, and that it really just comes down to intuition and professional lore, passed down from keeper to keeper.   There is a feeling that a college degree is a dangerous waste of time that just traps you in debt without teaching you anything you need to know, but is still almost mandatory because so many candidates want so few jobs that employers can afford to add arbitrary requirements.

After working in the field for a few years, I decided to start working on my master's degree.  I still worked full time, but took classes on the side.  I was astonished at the derision - some of it tinged with hostility - I got from some of my coworkers.  In their eyes, it was a sign that I thought that I was better than them, that I thought that there were things to learn from a professor or a text book.

There are certainly justifications for these views.  What keeper or aquarist hasn't sat back in irritation while a curator or director - someone better paid, better educated - sits back in an office and makes decisions that the keeper disagrees with, decisions that they feel may be ill-informed, or not be in the best interests of the animal?  It's certainly true that there are relatively few college classes in exotic animal management - I considered myself lucky to go to a school that had one. 

However, most of what I do know about zoos and aquariums, I learned through the skills that I honed and developed while I was at college.  For me, it was an environment that didn't just teach facts, but taught me how to learn - how to ask the right questions, sift through the information, and find the right answers.  It wasn't so much the classroom lectures and labs that helped me grow as a zookeeper, but the emphasis on critical thinking, making connections, understanding complex ideas, and doing research beyond Google. 

I feel that a fear of elitism is only a small side-effect of the anti-intellectual bias in many zookeepers.  Really, I think it's fear of change.

Animal keepers have always been a highly intuitive group, protective of their charges and somewhat resistant to change.  Change, after all, can be bad, so why fix what isn't broken?  The answer is, just because something works, doesn't mean it can't work better.  Sometimes, we don't realize that things aren't working until we try something new.  The only way to develop new and better techniques for our animals is to open our minds up to learning, sharing, and critiquing new ideas.  There are endless forums for doing so - conferences, books, articles, and, yes, formal education.

It's time that we accept that higher education is important to our profession.  Not just as an end onto itself, but as a means towards providing better care for animals.