SDE, HUNTER GATHERER SOCIETIES AND INDIGENOUS CULTURES:
What our roots tell us about how we learn
The Origins of SDE: Everywhere and All the Time
SDE proponents have contrasted modern schooling with learning experiences in hunter-gatherer societies and indigenous cultures, as well as many parts of the world before schooling became the norm and did not require coercion. In these cultures, children are accorded a great deal of trust and autonomy. They learn informally through exploration, observation, and experimentation, and become ‘socialized’ through unsupervised play and collaboration with multiple aged children. They are not ‘taught’ or subject to assessments, and there is no expectation that all children will develop in the same manner at the same time.
Unschoolers aim to reproduce many of these approaches and argue that learning does not happen in one building or moment in the day but is everywhere and all the time. As to how children will get to know the ‘real world’ if they do not attend school, SDE practitioners ask: how is it that so many have come to believe that placing young people in an institution for 12 or 13 years, cut off from the world, is an adequate way of ensuring their encounter with reality?
Unschoolers view learning as an immersive experience within a community rather than removed from it and believe children of all ages can become innovators and problem solvers in their local worlds by exploring and direct experience that includes play, risk and trial and error.
They also point out that the removal of risk, exploration, unsupervised play and trial and error from the lives of children appears to be creating a great deal of anxiety. Children often internalize our lack of faith in their ability to overcome obstacles or to be resilient. They hear a continuous stream of information about their vulnerabilities, and often learn to interpret challenges as signs of mental health problems rather than natural difficulties that all they face and can overcome. I’ve written a bit more about this, and included relevant articles, in the section on “Mental health and unschooling”.
Peter Gray has written about hunter-gatherer societies in many places. This article is a good introduction and more can be found on his substack page linked above
Hunter-gatherer childhoods may offer clues to improving education and wellbeing
What can we learn from hunter-gatherers about children's mental health? An evolutionary perspective