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Full-Text Articles in Social Work
Teaching: Natural Or Cultural?, David F. Lancy
Teaching: Natural Or Cultural?, David F. Lancy
Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications
An important part of the common lore of anthropology is that “other people have culture.” That is, most people fail to recognize or appreciate how much of their lives are governed by habits, values, and expectations that are largely the product of history and culture. They fail to acknowledge that their own way of doing things is not necessarily universal or even widely shared. This ethnocentrism can have enormous consequences for the construction of child development theory and education.
Teaching Is So Weird, David F. Lancy
Teaching Is So Weird, David F. Lancy
Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications
Direct active teaching by parents is largely absent in children’s lives until the rise of WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized rich, democratic) society. However, as mothers become schooled and missionized – like Kline’s Fijian subjects – they adopt “modern” parenting practices, including teaching. There is great variability, even within WEIRD society, of parental teaching, suggesting that teaching itself must be culturally transmitted.