Childhood, Child-Parent Relationships and Education among Indigenous Small-Scale Marginalized Communities

"Parents' goals regarding their children's development not only structure what children should learn but also how they should do it" (Lavi 2021)

In my work among the South Indian Kattunayaka, traditionally classified as hunter-gatherers and officially recognised as one of India’s poorest populations, I examine notions of childhood and education in light of local core social values.

Parents' role in child development, and particularly the processes through which children learn the skills, behaviors and values they will need as adults, have long since fascinated psychologists and educators. Yet, most theories of child development focus on middle-class Europeans and North Americans of European ancestry, and too often the processes described are assumed to be universal. Over the last decades, a growing number of scholars have strongly argued for the need of a context-sensitive approach to child development and learning processes.

Through the case of a Kattunayaka forest-dwelling community, I offer an alternative view of child-development, learning and teaching, which prioritizes social skills above – and as a pre-condition of – academic/practical ones. I discuss the implications of such view to the evaluation of parenting, and more broadly, of formal education for marginalized indigenous communities.

In my work, I demonstrate how parents negotiate between conflicting senses of parenthood expected from them by authorities on one hand (for example, development workers, school staff and educators) and their families on the other. What is often described by teachers as parental carelessness and lack of responsibility is in fact a deliberate and thoughtful avoidance from ordering others, which in turn encourages the development of children’s autonomy. Kattunayaka parents have their own - subtle but very effective - ways of directing children to the knowledge and behaviour they deem important.

My work also demonstrates the significant challenges faced by Kattunayaka children in mainstream schools, as a result of a clash in home and school value systems and social stigma. This dissonance results in either high levels of withdrawal from school or an alteration of children’s sense of their own autonomy and as a result, their sense of their selves.

Recognizing and legitimizing a variety of learning methods (including autonomous child-led ones) and socially-centered views of intelligence and of child development can ease children’s school experience and thus might work to improve their academic skills as well. Moreover, learning social skills such as those promoted by Kattunayaka parents might be relevant not only to Kattunayaka children but to a much wider audience. In fact, it is important to acknowledge that Kattunayaka methods of learning are in no way unique to Kattunayaka. While in formal education contexts we tend to think of learning as book-and-teacher-centered, children everywhere (and not only children) learn through observation, play and participation. Children everywhere learn while interacting and watching others, and can thus benefit from skills of contact-making and being-with-others as demonstrated by the case of the Kattunayaka.