Thank you

Dear Mr. Gray,
On Aug. 2, you stated: "In our culture, unlike in hunter-gatherer cultures, there are countless different ways of making a living, countless different sets of skills and knowledge that children might acquire, and it is impossible for children in their daily lives to observe all those adult skills directly. In our culture, unlike in hunter-gatherer cultures, children are largely segregated from the adult work world, which reduces their opportunities to see what adults do and incorporate those activities into their play." I thought that was a good point, which called into question whether the method of education used in a hunter gatherer society would be applicable to our society. but i don't see where you've answered that as yet.

after all, children can't readily observe all professions and adult behavior. much of the work is mental with extensive prerequisites. there is an abstractness to modern work entirely missing from the HG society.

is our present culture so different from a hunter gatherer culture that it requires a different means of education?

thanks for the good work.

Dear Louis,

Thanks for bringing us back to this point.

In my Aug. 2 posting I used the words you quoted to show that we cannot assume, on a priori grounds,that an educational method that works for hunter-gatherers would work in our culture. There are some reasons--most notably the ones you quoted--for thinking it might not. However, to me, the real proof is in the pudding, the empirical grounds. The success of people who have been allowed to learn in this way, in the kind of environment I have described above, forces me to conclude that it does work.

My study of the graduates of Sudbury Valley convinced me that self-education works in our culture. Much of my subsequent work has centered on how it works, and some of my future postings will be devoted to that. For example, I'm planning two or three postings on the role of age mixing, and they will explain how age mixing helps to solve the exposure problem.

I might also add now that the students at Sudbury Valley develop a rich culture, which encompasses many of the general aspects of the larger adult culture. While hunter-gatherer children play at hunting, gathering, and the kinds of skills that are essential to success in their culture, students at Sudbury Valley play at computers and at many sorts of games that involve abstract means of thinking. They develop the general kinds of mental as well as physical skills that are required for a wide range of jobs in our culture. They do this not usually because they are deliberately educating themselves, but because it is natural to be drawn to the categories of activities that are seen as exciting and valuable in the larger culture.

It is also true that precisely because there are so many ways of making a living in our culture there is no need (nor any possibility) that each child will learn everything that is considered important to the culture. Different children in our culture who are educating themselves may take quite different paths and thereby fill different of the niches available.

Ultimately, of course, once a person has made a decision to become a professional of some sort--say, a doctor--it is crucial to learn directly from others who are such specialists. Neither Sudbury Valley nor conventional schools provide these opportunities. That is why we need specialized schools of higher education, such as medical schools.

You say above that "there is an abstractness to modern culture entirely missing from HG society." I agree in part with this, but would not put it in such an extreme way. I would contend that all expert thought--whether it is conducted by hunter-gatherers who are speculating about the direction of movement of an antelope they are tracking, based on a couple of bent pieces of grass, or modern physicians speculating on the best way to treat a particular person's cancer--involve a combination of empirical knowledge and hypothetical "if-then" reasoning. Children at play in our culture engage in a great deal of such reasoning, and my bet is that those in hunter-gatherer cultures do too. The general reasoning abilities develop through play. The very specific ways of applying those abilities to a particular specialty require further specialized experience.

Well, I've taken a sort of shot-gun approach to answering your question, just hinting at various ideas that taken all together help. Keep tuned, as I do think that future postings will shed more light on the issue you raise.

Meanwhile, I hope that other readers--perhaps especially some of those involved in the nonschooling movement--will provide their thoughts on this issue.

Best wishes,
Peter

i have a particularly difficult time imagining a system for adolescent education. i feel sure that it would include the possibility of internship/apprenticeship, and other methods of getting kids out of school and into real world communities.
and in this regard, I am particularly struck by the lack of financial responsibility of most teens. Since their expenses are, for the most part, paid by their parents or the school system, there isn't anything they have to do to pay their way in the world, until they are ejected from the home and must make a living. It seems like there should be a gradual way of introducing financial responsibility at an earlier age. What do you think of the old system of apprenticeships in the teen years?