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Introduction To Education  EDF 1005 Unit I Lesson I THE ORIGINS OF TEACHING
Personal Information Joseph D. McNair Associate Professor, Senior jmcnair@mdc.edu			Links Ask an Expert Course Syllabus More Links
Introduction to the Lesson The purpose of this unit and this first lesson is to introduce the education student to the origins of formal teaching/ learning. In this first lesson, the student will study several pre-historic, pre-literate and "primitive" cultures. The student will focus on how these cultures organized their societies and taught  their children.  The principle purpose of pre-historic, pre-literate and "primitive" education was to teach children to become good members of the tribe or band. They were concerned with the growth of individuals as tribal members and the thorough comprehension of their way of life during passage from prepuberty to postpuberty. There were far too many prehistoric cultures, too few records of their activities and much too much variation among them to derive standard practices that might be ascribed to all of these cultures. What can be said accurately is  children participated in adult activities as a part of their socialization, and  their learning through participation was based upon what American anthropologist Margaret Mead called empathy, identification, and imitation, (or processes described by other anthropologists as selective exposure, modeling, reward and punishment and nurturance and identification).  Children in the aforementioned cultures, before reaching puberty, learned by doing and observing basic social and technical practices.  Their teachers were their immediate family (parents) and/or members from their communities (agents of socialization). Postpuberty education (enculturation) in some of these cultures was strictly standardized and regulated. Teachers were often fully initiated members of the tribe, band or clan. The initiation "curriculum" consisted of a whole set of cultural and tribal religious values, as well as myths, the tribal worldview, history, rituals, and other knowledge. Formal education and enculturation are not  the same thing. In pre-historic, pre-literate and so-called "primitive" cultures, enculturation, pre and post-puberty rites of passage (initiations) ceremonies performed the function now performed by formal education. This lesson was developed to address elements of competency #4 on the functions of the educational process (teaching and learning) and schooling for education majors who are taking EDF 1005 in partial fulfillment of the graduation requirements for an Associate of Arts degree in Teaching (Elementary), Teaching (Secondary), Early Childhood and Exceptional Education. Competency #4 reads (in part) as follows: "The student will examine the various functions of the educational process and schooling by Explaining the difference between enculturation, education and schooling. (A complete list of all the competencies for EDF 1005 is provided below by clicking on the link titled competencies)
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