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For hundreds of thousands of years, up until the time when
agriculture was invented (a mere 10,000 years ago), we were all
hunter-gatherers. Our human instincts, including all of the
instinctive means by which we learn, came about in the context of
that way of life. And so it is natural to ask: How do
hunter-gatherer children learn what they need to know to become
effective adults within their culture?
In the last half of the 20th century, anthropologists located
and observed many groups of people - in remote parts of Africa,
Asia, Australia, New Guinea, South America, and elsewhere - who
had maintained a hunting-and-gathering life, almost unaffected by
modern ways. Although each group studied had its own language and
other cultural traditions, the various groups were found to be
similar in many basic ways, which allows us to speak of the
"hunter-gatherer way of life" in the singular. Wherever
they were found, hunter-gatherers lived in small nomadic bands (of
about 25 to 50 people per band), made decisions democratically,
had ethical systems that centered on egalitarian values and
sharing, and had rich cultural traditions that included music,
art, games, dances, and time-honored stories.
To supplement what we could find in the anthropological
literature, several years ago Jonathan Ogas (then a graduate
student) and I contacted a number of anthropologists who had lived
among hunter-gatherers and asked them to respond to a written
questionnaire about their observations of children's lives. Nine
such scholars kindly responded to our questionnaire. Among them,
they had studied six different hunter-gatherer cultures - three in
Africa, one in Malaysia, one in the Philippines, and one in New
Guinea.
What I learned from my reading and our questionnaire was
startling for its consistency from culture. Here I will summarize
four conclusions, which I think are most relevant to the issue of
self-education. Because I would like you to picture these
practices as occurring now, I will use the present tense in
describing them, even though the practices and the cultures
themselves have been largely destroyed in recent years by
intrusions from the more "developed" world around them.
1. Hunter-gatherer children must learn an enormous amount to
become successful adults.
It would be a mistake to think that education is not a big
issue for hunter-gatherers because they don't have to learn much.
In fact, they have to learn an enormous amount.
To become effective hunters, boys must learn the habits of the
two or three hundred different species of mammals and birds that
the band hunts; must know how to track such game using the
slightest clues; must be able to craft perfectly the tools of
hunting, such as bows and arrows, blowguns and darts, snares or
nets; and must be extraordinarily skilled at using those tools.
To become effective gatherers, girls must learn which of the
countless varieties of roots, tubers, nuts, seeds, fruits, and
greens in their area are edible and nutritious, when and where to
find them, how to dig them (in the case of roots and tubers), how
to extract the edible portions efficiently (in the case of grains,
nuts, and certain plant fibers), and in some cases how to process
them to make them edible or increase their nutritional value.
These abilities include physical skills, honed by years of
practice, as well as the capacity to remember, use, add to, and
modify an enormous store of culturally shared verbal knowledge
about the food materials.
In addition, hunter-gatherer children must learn how to
navigate their huge foraging territory, build huts, make fires,
cook, fend off predators, predict weather changes, treat wounds
and diseases, assist births, care for infants, maintain harmony
within their group, negotiate with neighboring groups, tell
stories, make music, and engage in various dances and rituals of
their culture. Since there is little specialization beyond that of
men as hunters and women as gatherers, each person must acquire a
large fraction of the total knowledge and skills of the culture.
2. The children learn all this without being taught.
Although hunter-gatherer children must learn an enormous
amount, hunter-gatherers have nothing like school. Adults do not
establish a curriculum, or attempt to motivate children to learn,
or give lessons, or monitor children's progress. When asked how
children learn what they need to know, hunter-gatherer adults
invariably answer with words that mean essentially: "They
teach themselves through their observations, play, and
exploration." Occasionally an adult might offer a word of
advice or demonstrate how to do something better, such as how to
shape an arrowhead, but such help is given only when the child
clearly desires it. Adults to not initiate, direct, or interfere
with children's activities. Adults do not show any evidence of
worry about their children's education; millennia of experience
have proven to them that children are experts at educating
themselves.1
3. The children are afforded enormous amounts of time to
play and explore.
In response to our question about how much time children had
for play, the anthropologists we surveyed were unanimous in
indicating that the hunter-gatherer children they observed were
free to play most if not all of the day, every day. Typical
responses are the following:
- "[Batek] children were free to play nearly all the
time; no one expected children to do serious work until they
were in their late teens." (Karen Endicott.)
- "Both girls and boys [among the Nharo] had almost all
day every day free to play." (Alan Barnard.)
- "[Efé] boys were free to play nearly all the time
until age 15-17; for girls most of the day, in between a few
errands and some babysitting, was spent in play." (Robert
Bailey.)
- "[!Kung] children played from dawn to dusk."
(Nancy Howell.)
The freedom that hunter-gatherer children enjoy to pursue their
own interests comes partly from the adults' understanding that
such pursuits are the surest path to education. It also comes from
the general spirit of egalitarianism and personal autonomy that
pervades hunter-gatherer cultures and applies as much to children
as to adults.2 Hunter-gatherer
adults view children as complete individuals, with rights
comparable to those of adults. Their assumption is that children
will, of their own accord, begin contributing to the economy of
the band when they are developmentally ready to do so. There is no
need to make children or anyone else do what they don't want to
do. It is remarkable to think that our instincts to learn and to
contribute to the community evolved in a world in which our
instincts were trusted!
4. Children observe adults' activities and incorporate those
activities into their play.
Hunter-gatherer children are never isolated from adult
activities. They observe directly all that occurs in camp - the
preparations to move, the building of huts, the making and mending
of tools and other artifacts, the food preparation and cooking,
the nursing and care of infants, the precautions taken against
predators and diseases, the gossip and discussions, the arguments
and politics, the dances and festivities. They sometimes accompany
adults on food gathering trips, and by age 10 or so, boys
sometimes accompany men on hunting trips.
The children not only observe all of these activities, but they
also incorporate them into their play, and through that play they
become skilled at the activities. As they grow older, their play
turns gradually into the real thing. There is no sharp division
between playful participation and real participation in the valued
activities of the group.
For example, boys who one day are playfully hunting butterflies
with their little bows and arrows are, on a later day, playfully
hunting small mammals and bringing some of them home to eat, and
on yet a later day are joining men on real hunting trips, still in
the spirit of play. As another example, both boys and girls
commonly build play huts, modeled after the real huts that their
parents build. In her response to our questionnaire, Nancy Howell
pointed out that !Kung children commonly build a whole village of
play huts a few hundred yards from the real village. The play
village then becomes a playground where they act out many of the
kinds of scenes that they observe among adults.
The respondents to our survey referred also to many other
examples of valued adult activities that were emulated regularly
by children in play. Digging up roots, fishing, smoking porcupines
out of holes, cooking, caring for infants, climbing trees,
building vine ladders, using knives and other tools, making tools,
carrying heavy loads, building rafts, making fires, defending
against attacks from predators, imitating animals (a means of
identifying animals and learning their habits), making music,
dancing, storytelling, and arguing were all mentioned by one or
more respondents. Because all this play occurs in an age-mixed
environment, the smaller children are constantly learning from the
older ones.
Nobody has to tell or encourage the children to do all this.
They do it naturally because, like children everywhere, there is
nothing that they desire more than to grow up and to be like the
successful adults that they see around them. The desire to grow up
is a powerful motive that blends with the drives to play and
explore and ensures that children, if given a chance, will
practice endlessly the skills that they need to develop to become
effective adults.
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