“I would be ashamed to admit to the Indians that where I come from the women do not feel themselves capable of raising children until they read the instructions written in a book by a strange man.”
– Jean Liedloff, The Continuum Concept
Mainstream Western culture treats childhood as an intellectual construct. When the possibility of a child impinges upon our lives, we buy books and read magazine articles to learn how to cope, we consult experts to make sure we give the best care, we read and discuss the latest research on what’s best for a child. When it comes time to give him formal schooling, he is typically initiated into a system of public education that emphasizes reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic, the learning of which is based largely on rote. The process of growing up and learning, in effect, becomes purely an exercise in technique.
Human beings are a recent innovation. We’ve only been around for a few million years, and out of those millions, only in the last few thousand years have we begun to differentiate ourselves from the natural environment. Our primary tool for doing so has been the intellect. Our experiment in the development of the intellect has wrought such swift and amazing changes that we’ve celebrated it without perceiving what the consequences might be.
One of the casualties has been our instincts for raising children. The contrast between technologically advanced societies and more “primitive” societies — such as the !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert and the Yequana of the Amazon — is marked with regard to both child-rearing and transmission of knowledge. It quickly becomes apparent that children in the latter societies learn more, retain more, and are better adjusted in their relationships to their surroundings and to other people than children who have become dependent on a more technological society. Our few thousand years of experimentation does not mean we should ignore the experience of millions of years before; formal education itself is a recent invention, mere hundreds of years old. Compared to sitting and passively absorbing facts, context has always been a better teacher: learning from a variety of other people, from the environment, from situations and events, from repeated observation over long periods of time. We still learn best in holistically. Moreover, as human beings we are happier and healthier when we not only learn but also live and rear our children holistically. Thus, to raise and to teach a child according to our natural heritage is the wisest course.
“The entire family has the understanding that it must water the flower of birth, meaning the child, with love and care. This is what we believe and try to live by, even now.”
– Victor Sarracino, from Respect for Life
Birth is a child’s first impression of the world, so everything that happens to a child from birth onward will have a strong impact on the child’s development throughout her life. Among the Yequana of South America, infants are carried everywhere from birth until they begin to crawl. Jean Liedloff, who spent two years among the Yequana, calls this earliest phase of life the “in-arms phase.” It is one of the most noticeable differences between Western approaches to the child and the Yequana approach. Nor are the Yequana unique in this regard; among the !Kung San, there is nearly constant passive physical contact between caregivers and infants, far more than between their American counterparts.
The in-arms phase is quite significant. Liedloff asserts that it is this early physical contact that makes much of the difference between emotional security and insecurity — an argument that is corroborated by the work of psychologist Mary Ainsworth and others, who found that the differences between “securely attached” children and “avoidant” or “anxious-ambivalent” children are, to a large extent, based upon the degree to which physical contact is given or withheld. Moreover, as an infant remains constantly in someone’s arms, she becomes privy to all sorts of activity. She becomes accustomed to the voices and movements of her caretaker and others around her; she is exposed to a variety of stimuli, including a tremendous amount of language. Her exposure to a variety of chaotic situations is balanced by the familiarity of her caregiver’s physical presence. Emotional and physical security and the novelty of exploring new situations are thus not put in conflict, and contrary to many modern views, it is this fulfillment of security that allows the child to develop independence. Liedloff states,
The growth of independence and the power to mature emotionally springs largely from the in-arms relationship in all its aspects. One cannot therefore become independent of the mother, except through her … giving the in-arms experience and allowing one to graduate from it upon fulfillment.
Strikingly, however, despite the enormous closeness of infants and parents, parental attitudes in native cultures are decidedly not child-centered. Contact, in fact, is largely passive. Among the Yequana, the attitude of mother to the baby is relaxed and receptive, but usually attending elsewhere. The child is the primary agent in their contacts: if he needs her, she is there. Thus, on the one hand there was freedom of love and affection, but on the other, the child was trained not to think of himself as the center of the universe. Among indigenous tribes of North America, it was common to use a cradleboard to carry the infant, and also to physically restrict movement. As a consequence, infants carried in this fashion were limited in their ability to explore physically, and so observation and inner quietude played a much more prominent role in cognitive development. The net result makes for a more disciplined and less openly competitive child, essentially providing early training in centeredness and awareness. This contrasts greatly with the stationary crib, which, while it has more room inside, never actually goes anywhere, and so less is actually experienced. Hence, this non-child-centered attitude leads to both a development of greater independence on the child’s terms, and a development of inner discipline. Both of these play a part in internalizing emotional security.
Nor is emotional security the only positive outcome — not by far. Research among the !Kung as shown that neuromotor, sensorimotor, and cognitive maturation of the !Kung infants may be aided by their experience being held in the vertical position, seated or standing, and by the constant environmental and social stimulation that being in-arms provides. In general, research findings show that intensive mother-infant contact and extreme indulgence of infant dependency are not incompatible with adequate neuromotor and cognitive development.
Growth and learning, of course, do not end at infancy. The education of children in indigenous cultures is just as notably different from our own stereotypical conceptions of learning as are their ways of child-rearing from ours.
“[There was] an enlightening argument between some younger men who hunt very little and some older and more active men. The inactive young men accused the older men of having neglected to teach them hunting. The older men countered that this was not something that one taught anybody, it was something that one just did.”
– Nicholas Blurton Jones and Melvin J. Konner
The hunters of the !Kung San receive no formal tutelage. No one gives them lists of animals to know, no one quizzes them, and their mood is not dependent upon receipt of a single letter. As far as modern society is concerned, they’re totally illiterate and unintelligent — and yet, they know far more than they could have ever been taught formally. Hunters must be extraordinarily versed in the natural environment in order to be effective at capturing prey.
In effect, there is a set of problems to be solved by the hunters over the course of several hours or days, and these problems re-present themselves continually: Where is the animal now? Which way is it going, and how fast? Is it likely to stop or to reverse direction? Where and how seriously is it wounded? How long will it live? Answering these questions requires adducing evidence concerning time of year; time of day; heat; wind direction; terrain; depth, shape, and displacement of tracks; condition of feces; condition and displacement of grass, twigs, and shrubs along the spoor; amount, position, and color of blood on the ground, grass, and bushes; and the store of knowledge concerning the behavior of different prey species, especially when under attack.
Such tremendous amounts of knowledge can only be mastered over a lifetime of experience, but the seeds are sown in childhood, and constantly added to, in the form of personal experiences, observations, deductions, stories, and more. Learning is continuous.
The acquisition of knowledge is also embedded deeply within natural and social contexts. Learning holistically involves a respect for one’s creaturehood — one’s natural needs and desires as a member of the natural environment and as a social being. Hence, “education” is inseparable from all other aspects of living. The Navajo tradition holds that there are four major areas that a person needs to balance in order to receive a good education: A child must be mentally stimulated; he must be physically strong and learn to sustain himself and survive; he must develop good relationships with self and others; and he must have a stable and loving home. Thus, balance and attunement to the requirements of being human are primary to a good education.
How, then, are these things — a multifaceted education, and the inner balance that underlies it — conveyed to the next generation?
Techniques for teaching may vary from tribe to tribe — some cultures, like the Ojibwa, did use some form of lecturing to convey knowledge — but for many, children are expected to teach themselves. According to Victor Sanchez, an anthropologist who lived with indigenous peoples of Mexico for some fifteen years, in the Náhuatl language there is no concept of being “taught.” The closest word, nimomashtic, literally means to teach yourself. Similarly, among the Yequana, a child is allowed many opportunities, but rarely pushed into learning anything. It is simply assumed that she will learn in time, and the expectation itself gives the impetus to learn. Indeed, according to Liedloff,
Either more or less assistance than a child demands is detrimental to his progress. Outside initiatives, therefore, or unsolicited guidance are of no positive use to him. He can make no progress than his own motivations encompass. A child’s curiosity and desire to do things himself are the definitions of his capacity to learn without sacrificing any part of his whole development. Guidance can only heighten certain abilities at the expense of others, but nothing can heighten the full spectrum of his capabilities beyond its in-built limits.
Experience, then, is crucial — even more so for subsistence cultures like the !Kung, Yiwara, Yequana, and others, for which success in the hunt meant survival and failure meant starvation. Children learn by doing, by observation, and by imitation, and they do these constantly and naturally.
What about communication of knowledge between people? As psychologist Ka’it’iba’i points out, observational learning has its limitations. It is effective up to a certain point, but then some verbalization may be needed to guide the child further. Moreover, from an evolutionary point of view, it would not make sense for children not to take advantage of their elders, who have more experience than they. But among indigenous cultures there is no apparent system of formally communicating knowledge. Indeed, the !Kung and others, including Yiwara Australian aborigines, react with disapproval and irritation toward those who try to instruct others or otherwise set themselves above others. There must, then, be indirect methods of transmission.
Actually, the whole process of learning in a native culture is nearly synonymous with socialization — training a person to participate with others. Descriptions of “teaching by doing” are abundant in anthropological accounts of many diverse cultures. Socialization involves not only the experiential learning that an individual can do on her own, but also the expectations of others — and feedback by others — to help her perform according to cultural standards. Learning thus becomes a social activity: people learn to hunt and track together, to build shelters together, to travel together, and so forth, and so come to know each other and learn to relate — and to develop one’s body in the physical work — at the same time that they learn.
One striking example of this kind of social learning is storytelling. In oral cultures, storytelling is an integral part of this socialization: not only is it entertainment, but also a means of conveying knowledge, experience, and values, in the same way that Aesop’s fables and Grimm’s fairy tales have done for our culture. And stories are also a way for people to get together to interact with each other, to learn how others respond to them, to be together as a group, and to release strong emotions. Thus stories serve many different functions simultaneously.
“There is little sacred in Civilized societies. They are systems-oriented; they look to structure for answers, not knowing of the ways of Elders and the Talking circle and the Inner Voice. The once-sacred becomes lowered to the Civilized society’s secular norm.”
– Tamarack Song, Journey to the Ancestral Self
Of what use is any of this?
The conditions in which most of us live are considerably different from our hunting-gathering roots. Can we really learn from those roots, or would it be best to leave it where it lies?
It would be difficult to say that we could not learn. The human animal has not had time to change much in only a few thousand years of civilization. Our relationships have not changed at the fundamental level: we still require love, feel anger when slighted, feel jealousy when jilted, are happy when we achieve something important, and so forth. Our minds are still wired for learning through experience. Human operating system version one (as Microsoft researcher Bill Hill calls it) hasn’t crashed yet.
And we’re not entirely ignorant of what makes humans grow and learn, either. That an education founded on emotional security, mental stimulation, and social balance can still be achieved to some extent is evident because we still have well-balanced individuals in society, and some well-balanced schools. I have seen such principles played out in Bing Nursery School, which in its own way is a community that echoes our earthborn roots. The children are not forced to do anything unreasonable or wholly undesired, and there is absolutely no formal learning. Instead, there is a kind of freestyle education, in which the children achieve all through play. Simple block construction can develop their imagination at the same time it elicits problem-solving behavior and interpersonal relating. There are routines of eating together, of learning together, of listening to and learning from elders — and of course rebelling against them, but stil respecting them — and of gathering at the end of the day to hear and tell stories.
At higher levels of education, too, there are alternative school systems, such as the Waldorf schools, which use storytelling, art, and experiential learning in education. An integrated approach is also encouraged in diverse nonacademic classes for activities like martial arts and music, and prescribed in various philosophies and religions.
Sadly, it seems to be lacking in public schools. The fault of that lies in politics rather than nature. Institutional change is slow and stubborn. Ka’it’iba’i writes, “Some aspects of the school culture are not going to change because they are functional and inherently related to other modern social institutions and the prevalent urban literate culture.” True enough; but no one said education had to be one-sided. Public school classrooms don’t have to be prisons of boredom, as I remember them to be.
Solving complex social problems is beyond the scope of this essay. But the means and the opportunities exist for individuals to choose to raise and teach their children differently, more naturally. The difficulties with politics and social problems are in some ways predicated upon the same disconnection from nature that initiated our leap into civilized society in the first place — the same loss of awareness and respect for others and for our environment. Nothing is sacred, and in the absence of the sacred we are lost. This sacredness, this simple awareness of being human, is the key to our rediscovery of natural child-raising and education and of the rest of our natural heritage.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1967). Infancy in Uganda. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Ka’it’iba’i, †. (1996). Family and human development across cultures. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Konner, M. J. (1976). Maternal care, infant behavior and development among the !Kung. In R.B. Lee and I. Devore (Eds.), Kalahari hunter-gatherers (pp. 218-245). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Morey, S., & Gilliam, O., Eds. (1974). Respect for life: The traditional upbringing of American Indian children. New York: Myrin Institute Books.
Sanchez, V. (1996). Toltecs of the new millennium (Robert Nelson, trans.). Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Company.
Song, T. (1994). Journey to the ancestral self: The native lifeway guide to living in harmony with Earth Mother. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press.
