I recently had a chance to interview the author of the book "How Other Children Learn."
Why did you write How Other Children Learn?
On a personal level, I had just finished two books about what we can learn from societies in which children’s in-school learning is more effective than our children’s. I wanted to write about a learning of a different sort, which meant looking at children’s learning in societies where schools either don’t exist at all or play a minor role in children’s lives. In turn, that meant exploring “traditional” (pre-modern) societies, which are sharply different from ours.
On a professional level, I was intrigued by two questions. The first concerned what and how children learn in societies where academic learning plays little or no role in their lives. The second concerned how parents in such societies think about and carry out the raising of their children. The more traditional a society is, the more it resembles the way our ancestors lived. I wondered: Is it possible that, after the passage of thousands of years, we modern folks have completely forgotten about ways of living and learning that our ancestors found effective? Could re-acquainting ourselves with their ways help us reassess our ways?
Why is it important for families to see what works with other parenting styles?
Families in every society live to some extent in an echo chamber. By that I mean that each family lives among friends, relatives, colleagues, neighbors, and media that all share very similar assumptions about how the world works and beliefs about how best to live, learn, love, and work. We continually build on these assumptions and beliefs as we converse and interact with each other, reinforcing them. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that our deep familiarity with the way things are – even the frustrating parts – discourages us from seeking improved strategies. It’s just easier to do what those around us keep on doing.
But what if we could explore how families in other societies deal with those aspects of child-rearing we find frustrating? That might prompt us to re-think a few of our own approaches.
Here's an example. A common frustration for American middle-class parents is persuading their children to take responsibility for chores around the home. Parents often complain that “It’s easier to do it myself instead of trying to get my kids to do it!” But I’ll bet you don’t know any parents who’ve seriously tried to develop a novel approach to this. Turns out that parents in traditional societies rarely experience this frustration. You’ll be awe-struck at the size of the responsibilities uncomplainingly handled by even young children. So how do traditional parents do it? This topic is so relevant to today that I devote an entire chapter to it.
What are some of the unexpected things modern parents might learn from older parenting styles?
It’s not so much that we can learn from older parenting styles, but rather that we can learn about ourselves by looking into the mirror of older styles and noting the many contrasts. For example, modern folks take as obvious that we human beings need to devote prodigious quantities of time, treasure, and effort to raising our children, constantly ensuring that they are happy, well-rounded, sociable, intelligent, and shielded from every danger. Believe it or not, parents in traditional societies don’t do that. I came up with a little maxim about this:
Modern parents parent as much as possible.
Traditional parents parent as little as possible.
Those traditional parents are also human beings who, exactly like us, give birth to utterly helpless newborns. But fast forward three years and beyond, and their parental lives are almost totally unlike ours. They haven’t in any sense abandoned their youngsters. Like us, they love them and deeply care that they will develop into contributing members of their family and community – which the great majority do soon after attaining puberty. But all along, those traditional parents were “parenting as little as possible!” How can this be?
You can understand why I found it so fascinating to research and write How Other Children Learn. And perhaps you see, too, that looking into the mirror of older parenting styles and making comparisons has the potential to prompt us to re-evaluate our own styles. It’s not a straightforward comparison because the social and physical environments in which modern and traditional families live are totally different. Nevertheless, reassessments are possible.
You can learn more about How Other Children Learn at www.howotherchildrenlearn.info/.
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