Native American educaiton vs modern American education?

I have been reading a lot on the problems associated with out education systems, their shortcomings and essentially how it is all wrong.

A lot of the curriculum theorists are still looking to our ancestry for answers on how we should be educating our children. With advances in psychology and anthropology and from the many errors we have made, and still are making, there is a push for an educational reform and I see so many possiblities for it that its quite exciting.

One great book I'm reading called "Ecological Literacy - Educating Our Children for a Sustainable Future" has a great essay by Malcolm Margolin, author of The Ohlone Way and owner of Heyday Books here in the Bay Area. In his part he tells of the learning systems of old and how people were taught in ways that made learning something "stick" and contributed more to society as a whole. Some of you may be interested and some not but I am finding this shift of idealogy intruiging.

Here is a story that was often told. Firgure out the meaning of it and then ponder for awhile the implications of this kind of teaching and how it could effect a person thoughout his/her life compared to our current "fast food" teaching methods.

From the book:

"Walk almost anywhere in forested lands of the northwestern California and you will hear the plaintive call of the mourning dove. On at least four seperate occasions, when I was with Indian friends, this call triggered the telling of the story of Mourning Dove, o'row'e in the Yurok language. It is perhaps the most popular and widely told of the old-time stories.

Like other such mythic tales, the sotry of the o'row'e takes place in the distant past, shortly after the creation, when all the animals of the world were a kind of divine people (woge in Yuork). They seem to have lived and even looked much like people, and long ago their deeds established the world as we know it today."

"In that old world, o'row'e was a gambler. Once he was deeply involved in a gambling game with others. He was on a great winning streak, piling up around himself great stores of Indian treasure: white deerskins, huge obsidian blades, red woodpecker scapls, long dentalia shells, in short all the wealth and beauty of the Indian world. He was interupted by a messenger who had come to fetch him, to tell him that his grandfather was dying and that he needed to come immediately to the deathbed. Just a few more hands, just a few more hands, said o'row'e, and I'll be right there. He continued to play, continued to win, and his grandfather died. When the time of the metamorphosis occured, when the woge of old took on the animal forms by which we know them, o'row'e was transformed into the mourning dove. To this day you can see glistening around his neck the treasures he had won in that gambling game. And you can hear the call he will make through eternity as he mourns forever the grandfather he once ignored."

Even today, every time someone hears o'row'e cry, it calls to mind that ancient story and with it a constant reminder that one cannot let material gain get in the way of more essential human obligations. If you do, you will pay eternally for the lapse: just listen to o'row'e

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RonH @ Sep 8 2006, 03:03 PM) [snapback]316632[/snapback]</div>

I can correctly asusme you got the main part about not putting so much value on material posessions when it detracts from our basic human needs of family and/or friends and being social?

The other point is this is an easier way for us to learn. You listen and must think about the story as it unfolds and often times may have to think about it some more and will later get the meaning but in the end you have used your brain to work it out and come to a meaning instead of just having it handed to you like a fast food order. Our current education system is nothing more than McDonalds in its efficiency in turning out students but like McDonalds many of those students have not learned much of anything and as such lack quality. Basic memorization can only last so long if there are not constant reminders of the study material. In the case of o'row'e, once you had the meaning of the story, any time you see or hear a mourning dove it would be a reminder of why we should value family and our basic human needs over material gain. This is a direct reflexion of our current ploblem we label "Affluenza".

I know this may sound a bit weird but it may just be my inability to convey the message corectly. There are a few sources I am reading and they all keep making points and stating views that I have read in many other sources so I'm coming to this realization that there must be some kind of truth to this to see it so many places and to have experienced the differences myself. If people are interested I can give you the sources so you may read about them yourself but many would require you to buy books.

I may be all about the environment but I'm also about people and with some of the stuff I am seeing in our society and watching my sisters, and nephews grow up I firmly believe we are in need for a change.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RonH @ Sep 8 2006, 03:39 PM) [snapback]316647[/snapback]</div>

The point is for younger children to get a better start instead of the jail style system they are in now. With a better moral character and social understanding of their role in cosiety and a more sincere desire to help it should make for better students and overall better people than what we are currently growing.

Im obiously not the authority on the subject but there are a lot theorists that design curriculums that agree with this line of thinking.

It falls in line with some of the ConnectwithKids.com material I read/watch.

 

I agree Daniel. I dont think they point of it is to teach them through myths but more to teach them through the slower learning process that goes along with that kind of education. Smaller schools, more time with children instead of shoving a plate full of numbers, making them swallow it and then using a standardized testing process to evaluate our work. :/ It goes hand in hand with the teaching AND UNDERSTANDING of values, morals, and how it makes one feel to help another. I was gettign my haircut today at a shop with mostly eldery women working there and trhis radio commercial came on with this young kid telling this old man to "get with the times" and then some babble from the old man which basically just made him seem inept. The whole time I sat through this commercial I couldnt help but cringe at the blatant devalueing of the elderly, the woman listing heard it as well and their body language spoke how they felt about it. Its how we are being taught, out with the old, in with the new and that the elderly are to be stuck in homes and not valued for their wisdom.

The idea is there is a better way to do this instead of trying to get our schools to perform with factory precsision. Children need to be taught how to think on their own, not made to memorize.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RonH @ Sep 8 2006, 10:13 PM) [snapback]316840[/snapback]</div>

You know Ron, Im a little tired of the sarcasm from you and some of the other members who want to do nothing more than bash on new ideas and forward thinking. It really is a drag to see that kind of mentality in this world. Especially from people who don't even research the relavent items any further than wikpedia.

I always find it even more amusing that no one ever comes up with a good rebuttal to these ideas, all they can offer up is sarcasm because they lack the knowledge or intuition to throw up a good arguement.. If you are not interested in the subject material then that is perfectly fine. You are entitled to your values and opinions but please be an adult about it and click back out of the thread.

For anyone actually interested in the subject or where the concepts orginate more information can be found here:

Center for Ecoliteracy

Bioneers

Slow Food Movement

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RonH @ Sep 8 2006, 11:27 PM) [snapback]316870[/snapback]</div>

I grew up in those kinds of schools/situations so Im fairly well versed

It has to start somewhere and if parents wont initiate it then someone else should. Allowing children to grow up that way is not the right thing to do and unless we start investing heavily in our people we will go nowhere as a culture and the decline of our nation will be in sight. Our currrent systems do not work so changes must be made. Do you have any studies showing other alternatives? Im game to check em out. Most of my friends are teachers or professors so any other info I can talk with them about is great.

Funny you mentioned the migrant workers ESL children. Are you bringing in the illegal immigration problem or just the non-english speaking obstacles faced at schools? The former has no bearing on this discussion, the latter doesnt change the viability of the ideas backing the program because the slower paced learning principles would actually facilitate the education of more children than the current system, including those who dont speak english because most cultures share a lot of the same needs and emotions which is much easier to convey information and start dialog than just shear academics. On this point I visited a remote impoverished "town" called Ayacara in southern Chile/Patagonia this winter on a sustainability program and to see how they ran their school. The school is very poorly funded and some of the items they used to teach the children were truely simple yet ingenious. The children were very sharp and it was very easy to understand the things they tried to show me they were learning even with the language barrier because they had truely learned the material and not just memorized it so it was easy for them to switch angles and approach "teaching" me in different ways till they found a way for me to understand them (IE take me outside and demostrate how their studies related to the outside world).

So please dont dismiss me as some yuppie rich kid who has this fanciful vision of how things could be. I've been very poor and I've had lots of money and everywhere in between. I've had no family (dead or drug addicts in jail/prison) and I've had a loving family (guardian parents). Im probably one of the most dynamic people you will ever meet and I've had to live/learn things the hard way most of the time. Does it make me any less or better than anyone else? I dont think so but I do have a view from most sides of the fence and I dearly wish they would have had these kinds of programs when I grew up. Maybe I wouldnt have spent half my life thinking I was stupid becasue thats how our school system labled me... Wasnt until college I got over that and have remained a 3.9 GPA student since.

 

I'll definately check that movie out.

I'll be doing a sustainability seminar in Oct. at Chico state and if possible I will bring up the inner cicty applications and what types of adaptations would have to be made or at least any special concerns for something like this to work. If I get anything out of it I'll let you know. And yes, part of it is learning by doing and learning a sense of place which has been advocated for quite some time now.

I think its great you take an active role in their education. Since I cannot do too much on the school side with my much younger sisters or nephews, I do what I can outside of the school by the gifts I choose for them and time I spend with them out of school.