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Lesson 33 |
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Education |
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Why is education democratic in bookless tribal societies? |
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Education is one of the key words of our time. |
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A man without an education, many of us believe, |
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is an unfortunate victim of adverse circumstances, deprived of one of the greatest twentieth-century opportunities. |
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Convinced of the importance of education, modern states 'invest'in institutions of learning to get back 'interest' |
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in the form of a large group of enlightened young men and women who are potential leaders. |
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Education, with its cycles of instruction so carefully worked out, |
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punctuated by textbooks--those purchasable wells of wisdom--what would civilization be like without its benefits? |
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So much is certain: that we would have doctors and preachers, |
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lawyers and defendants marriages and births--but our spiritual outlook would be different. |
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We would lay less stress on 'facts and figures' and more on a good memory, |
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on applied psychology, and on the capacity of a man to get along with his fellow-citizens. |
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If our educational system were fashioned after its bookless past |
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we would have the most democratic form of 'college' imaginable. |
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Among tribal people all knowledge inherited by tradition is shared by all; |
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it is taught to every member of the tribe |
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so that in this respect everybody is equally equipped for life. |
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It is the ideal condition of the 'equal start' |
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which only our most progressive forms of modern education try to regain. |
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In primitive cultures the obligation to seek and to receive the traditional instruction is binding to all. |
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There are no'illiterates'--if the term can be applied to peoples without a script-- |
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while our own compulsory school attendance became law in Germany in 1642, |
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in France in 1806, and in England in 1876 and is still nonexistent in a number of 'civilized' nations. |
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This shows how long it was before we deemed it necessary to make sure that |
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all our children could share in the knowledge accumulated by the 'happy few' during the past centuries. |
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Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means. |
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All are entitled to an equal start. |
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There is none of the hurry which, in our society, often hampers the full development of a growing personality. |
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There, a child grows up under the everpresent attention of his parents; |
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therefore the jungles and the savannahs know of no 'juvenile delinquency'. |
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No necessity of making a living away from home results in neglect of children, |
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and no father is confronted with his inability to 'buy' an education for his child. |
