KPELLE LESSONS

The study has empirical credibility, documenting and analyzing differences of teaching and learning styles and the cultural framework of cultural transmission, and demonstrating the inherent complexity and multidimensionality of the problem.

The most interesting aspect to me is the socio-linguistic analysis of language differences, for this holds the most promise for discovering substantively the critical difference which make the difference. (In cultural cognition).

The main bone of contention I have with this work is the explicit contrast between the notion of what a 'traditional' context amounts to and what a scientific one is supposed to be. "Thus all values are rooted in the past, and change in essential areas is consequently feared. Such change threatens to shatter the self validating system of authority. It is not so much 'what is, is right' as 'what has been, is right'". (page 89-90) Exactly what constitutes 'traditional' as a typological, categorical construct, is a presumed frame of reference for isolating and describing particular elements of 'traditional' Kpelle culture. But where is the baseline, what are the implicit stereotypes, where is the sense of history behind the veil of authority, and traditional compared to what? Implicitly the comparison is in contraposition to the 'left for granted' notion of the 'scientific mode of reasoning', as being somehow superior, preferable, essentially different and yet left largely undefined except as analytical precision, syllogistic reasoning, arithmetic functions. "The teacher shall in this way be helping the child to see the universality of mathematics and scientific method, a universality which allows him to apply his mind to any problem or question. The teacher can lead him to see that knowledge is productive and creative, lead him to full understanding of his world and the power to improve it." (page 86)

Counterposing 'traditional' to the 'scientific' is a rather convenient construct yet theoretically unsatisfying. Clifford Geertz in his classic essay on religion writes:

Perhaps the chief reason for the rather special role of comparative religious study is that issues which, when raised within the context of western culture, led to extreme social resistance and personal turmoil could be freely and even comfortably handled in terms of bizarre, presumably primitive, and thus--also presumably--fanciful materials from long ago or far away. The study of 'primitive religions' could pass as the study of superstition, supposedly unrelated to the serious religious or moral concerns of advanced civilization, at best either a sort of vague foreshadowing of them or a grotesque parody of them. This made it possible to approach all sorts of touch subjects, such as polytheism, value relativism, possession, and faith healing, from a frank and detached point of view. One could ask searching questions about the historicity of myth among Polynesians; when asked in relation to Christianity, these same questions were, until quite recently, deeply threatening. (Religion as a Cultural Myth 1967)

Philosophers of science have been arguing the epistemology and metaphysics of scientific method for a very long time, and with good reason, for a bottom line on the problem would not only be undesirable, but probably unscientific as well. Successful scientists do something, yet even they may not have an exact idea of how it works. And the philosophical argument has come to reveal that there may be a little more tradition, ideology and authority in the development of science than purists and fundamentalists would like to acknowledge.

It is most relevant that the comparative study of religion always leads to the question of 'collective representations' and the problem of 'primitive mentality'. This is contraposed against a frequently too implicit notion that we have a firm idea of what the 'civilized' mind is all about. Usually it is logical, rational and scientific. What kind of logic children learn to use may vary across cultural and traditional settings. Evidence suggests that 'tradition bound' logic or folk reason is different from 'scientific method' logic--that though the former may be from the scientific standpoint fallacious (modus tollens) it may not necessarily be less complex but a more difficult form of reasoning than arguing from the antecedent (modus ponens). This difference leads to the paradox that 'natives' argue from the consequent, and therefore don’t make the kinds of associations with the facility that western oriented thinkers would expect. It leads to perhaps fallacious impression that:

The first fact was not related to the second problem by an abstract intermediate understanding of the structure of numerals. Similarly, a child who learned geographical facts about a particular area in one class could see no reason to use these facts in another class dealing with the same geographical area but in a different subject. (page 33)

We must pause for a second look back upon our scientific tradition as perhaps its own culture bound system informed by its own principles of authority and ideology (prediction and control) which perhaps superimposes upon the natural mind its own implicit aim is the elimination of cognitive uncertainty. It is rooted in a tradition of civilization which has set a certain premium upon rational literacy. And the ideology is one of 'collective representation'. I have sat in more than one anthropology, philosophy and science course in which the following commentary rings true--"it is each man for himself except where tradition itself dictates cooperation" and "No occasion arises for a child to use his talent for discovery or his curiosity in relation to the subject matter of the course…"(page 34). In the transmission of our own traditions are we any less tradition bound, any less authoritarian or is the encouragement of competition any different from the "lack of cooperation?"

As we come to export this tradition to other peoples, we must be cautious about the problems of acculturation and enforced assimilation to our own value orientations and rational structures. We must learn that there is a critical difference between assimilation and integration, where the former leads to renunciation of the indigenous cultural values and the latter leads to a genuine amalgamation of cultures. To some extent, this work successful achieves the latter--"to be most effective, the teacher should begin with materials of the indigenous culture, leading the child to use them in a creative way…"(page 94) and "to state in their own terms that they have, for instance, a set of stones, a set of bottle caps, or a set of leaves…for their own organization of experience in an arithmetical framework." (page 95) But we must be wary of "Instead of using traditional Kpelle authoritarian method of rote memory and imitation as a means of introducing the western content, the teacher should use the western, scientific method of comprehending, clarifying and organizing content drawn directly form the child's familiar daily experiences" (page 93) and "The Kpelle school child does not in the present system of education organize his universe of school experience in a meaningful way…" (page 93). We must be careful of merely substituting one sense of tradition for another, one kind of authority for another.

A more interesting and suggestive analytical framework, rather than 'traditional versus scientific' is the contrast between orality and literacy and the difference between oral cultures based upon a different tradition of cultural transmission and cognitive orientation and literate cultural traditions based upon the transmission of print media. This framework is not a direct contrast between oral and literate but a comparison of cultures bound by these different kinds of tradition. Furthermore, there are no pure culture types--semi-oral cultures and sub-cultures abound in civilized societies. A basic sense of orality underlies all cultural orientations, however literate, however much literacy predominates as an overarching epistemological and metaphysical paradigm. In this regard, a fundamental 'orality' (respect for authority, concrete thinking, lack of abstraction, rote memorization, imitation?) may be found within any cultural context, however scientific or literate. "No occasion arises for a child to use his talent for discovery…"

Last Updated: 03/07/05