How Other Children Learn

What Five Traditional Societies Tell Us about Parenting and Children's Learning

Cornelius N. Grove

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781475862904
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

To gain comparative insights into middle-class Americans' child-related values and practices, Grove's How Other Children Learn examines children's learning and parents' parenting in five traditional societies. Such societies are those have not been affected by "modern" – urban, industrial – values and ways of life. They are found in small villages and camps where people engage daily with their natural surroundings and have little or no experience of formal classroom instruction.
The five societies are the Aka hunter-gatherers of Africa, the Quechua of highland Peru, the Navajo of the U.S. Southwest, the village Arabs of the Levant, and the Hindu villagers of India. Each society has its own chapter, which overviews that society's background and context, then probes adults' mindsets and strategies regarding children's learning and socialization for adulthood.
The book concludes with two summary chapters that draw broadly on anthropologists' findings about many traditional societies and offer examples from the five societies discussed earlier. The first reveals why children in traditional societies willingly carry out family responsibilities and suggests how American parents can attain similar outcomes. The second contrasts our middle-class patterns of child-rearing with traditional societies' ways of enabling children to learn and grow into contributing family and community members.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What Do Anthropologists of Childhood Actually Do?
• Chapter 2: Raising Oneself in the Forest: Growing Up among the Aka Hunter-Gatherers of Africa
• Chapter 3: Nothing Special for the Children: Growing Up among the Quechua of Highland Peru
• Chapter 4: Parenting by Persuading: Growing Up among the Navajos of the U.S. Southwest
• Chapter 5: According to Nomads’ Values: Growing Up among the Village Arabs of the Levant
• Chapter 6: The Total Immersion Family: Growing Up among the Hindu Villagers of India
• Chapter 7: How Do Other Children Learn Responsibility?
• Chapter 8: How Do Other Children Learn? And How Do Other Parents Parent?
• Postscript
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author