The point of schooling in the West is largely to teach
children how to bear doing things that they do not like doing. It is a quality
they must possess in order to work a job they will more than likely dislike
when they are adults.
The educational experience of children in traditional hunter/gatherer societies does
not consist of this. Child rearing and
education in such societies - as the psychologist Peter Grey has been pointing
out in his wonderful series of recent blog posts for Psychology Today - is, in fact, as distant from this teaching of
children to suffer through tasks which they loathe as one can imagine. The words “freedom” and “exploration” more
properly describe the development process children experience in these societies.
I imagine that this is because the ability to daily suffer
through tasks one finds loathsome, in environments one finds hideous and
alienating is not an ability adults in traditional hunter/gatherer societies
desperately need. In the mass society of
the industrialized West, conversely, it
may be the most crucial quality for an an adult to possess.
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