In How Other Children Learn, Dr Cornelius Grove Shares How In Traditional Societies, Children Learn With Little Or No Parental Involvement

On The Table Read Magazine, “the best book magazine the UK“, Dr Cornelius Grove shares what the education culture in traditional societies can teach us, in How Other Children Learn.

 

How Other Children Learn

What parent doesn’t believe their youngsters should readily contribute and finish routine family errands? His new book, How Other Children Learn: What Five Traditional Societies Tell Us about Parenting and Children’s Learning, Cornelius N. Grove, Ed.D. looks at five “traditional” societies in which children do exactly that as they grow into mature adults. However, they spend very little time in classrooms. How are those youngsters educated? How are their parents raised?

Dr. Grove defines traditional societies as those untouched by modern values and unaffected by urbanization and industrialization. They are still present in small villages and camps, where people interact with their natural surroundings on a daily basis (including growing or locating their daily food) and have little or no experience learning in a classroom.

Why look for new experiences from these societies?

Dr. Grove said that one reason is that it shows that children in traditional societies largely learn how to be adults who care about their families and communities on their own. A subsequent explanation is on the grounds that he is keen for modern parents to learn how traditional parents manage their kids. You won’t believe how uninvolved they are!

How Other Children Learn examines the following five societies in depth, drawing on published work by anthropologists of childhood:

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 chapter explores a society, outlining their experience and setting, then tests grown-ups’ mentalities and procedures with respect to childhood learning and socialization for adulthood.

Traditional Societies

The book comes to a close with two summary chapters that provide examples from the five societies that are discussed in the book and draw heavily on the findings of anthropologists regarding dozens of traditional societies. The first summary chapter discusses how children in traditional societies learn to accept family responsibilities, and offers advice for American parents on how to achieve the same results. The second contrasts traditional societies’ approaches to ensuring that children have opportunities to learn and grow into mature, responsible adults with our middle-class patterns of child rearing and school attendance.

Like their customary friends, our kids have an inherent ability to learn all alone and with different youngsters by openly investigating, mirroring grown-ups and participating in a wide range of exercises fortunately happening locally. How do our children’s opportunities to freely explore and interact with others compare to those of conventional children, Dr. Grove inquires? With school, extracurriculars and screen time, our own have not very many.

Dr Cornelius Grove

Cornelius Grove, a former high school history teacher, has also worked in educational publishing, traveled extensively in Europe and Africa, and earned a doctorate in education at Columbia University.  He served as research director for a student exchange organization, then founded and managed a global consultancy for 30 years.  He has taught on an adjunct basis at Columbia and New School Universities, and at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

 

Find more now:

For more details, visit www.howotherchildrenlearn.info or connect with the author at www.LinkedIn.com/in/cngrove-author/

How Other Children Learn: What Five Traditional Societies Tell Us about Parenting and Children’s Learning
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
Release Date: March 1, 2023
ISBN-10: ‎ 147587118X
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1475871180
Available from Amazon.com and BN.com

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