Learning Without Lessons Pedagogy in Indigenous Communities

In Learning Without Lessons, David F. Lancy fills a rather large gap in the field of child development and education. Drawing on focused, empirical studies in cultural psychology, ethnographic accounts of childhood, and insights from archaeological studies, Lancy offers the first attempt to review the principles and practices for fostering learning in children that are found in small-scale, pre-industrial communities across the globe and through history. His analysis yields a consistent and coherent "pedagogy" that can be contrasted sharply with the taken-for-granted pedagogy found in the West. The practices that are rare or absent from indigenous pedagogy include teachers, classrooms, lessons, verbal instruction, testing, grading, praise, and the use of symbols. Instead, field studies document the prevalence of self-guided learners who rely on observation, listening, learning in play from peers the hands-on use of real tools and, learning through voluntary participation in everyday activities such as foraging. Aiming to reverse the customary relation between western and non-Western theories or ideas about child learning and development, this book concludes that the pedagogy found in communities before the advent of schooling differs in very significant ways from that practiced in schools and in the homes of schooled parents.

David F. Lancy, Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Utah State University. Beginning in 1968 in Liberia, Lancy has done extensive cross-cultural fieldwork and repeated surveys of the ethnographic record with children as the focus. In total, he has authored eleven books and edited three. His current research interests center on the study of delayed personhood, the chore curriculum, children as a reserve labor force, children growing up in a Neontocracy, how children acquire their culture, socio-historical analyses of schooling, and the culture of street kids. His distinctions include the Utah State University Career Scholar award and Carnegie award for teaching excellence.