Deforesting among Andamanese Children

“We Only Teach Them How to Be Together”: Parenting, Child Development, and Engagement with Formal Education Among the Nayaka in South India

“…The case of the Nayaka presents a good example for the problems of evaluating or devaluating parents' choices and actions. It is relevant beyond this particular case as there are many indigenous, small-scale, and marginalized societies for whom the tension and structural inequalities between home and school are a daily experience (e.g., Pandya 2005;Wagle et al 2019). By exploring Nayaka parents' own perceptions of child development and of the processes of learning that are meant to lead to such development, I show that what is often interpreted by school staff as school failure and flawed parenting is actually based on a very sensible and realistic understanding of the current circumstances and of the children's future.…”

“…Anthropologists working with indigenous communities have shown that throughout the world, the dominant assumption that families should accommodate the school's value system rather than the school accommodating communities' values and ideas resulted in great tension either between students and their communities, or between communities and schools. For example, Creighton (2018) pointed that even today, Native American youth find themselves in an ambivalent position as, if they choose to propagate their heritage, they fall behind in school, but if they choose to adopt the culture of their new Lavi environment, they suffer from guilt and psychological problems because they offend their people (see also Pandya 2005 for hunter-gatherer communities of Andaman Islands). Wagle et al (2019) described schools in rural Nepal as encouraging graduates to value "other ways" of being, and abandon their seemingly "ignorant" and "uncivilized" communities in order to "succeed."…”

“…The structural obstacles faced by those children in the context of the education system are so vast that it is almost impossible to break through them. With poorly equipped, poorly maintained, and poorly staffed schools and very frequent events of teachers' absenteeism and disrespectful treatment, what children learn best in most schools is to acknowledge their own inferior social status (this is the case for many ST communities in India, see Balagopalan and Subrahmanian 2003;Pandya 2005;Sedwal and Kamat 2008;Sujatha 2002;Veerbhadranaika et al 2012). The chances of such school experience materializing in significant economic upliftment or social mobility, as it is advertised, are slim (see also Froerer 2012).…”

“…Such difficulties are by no means exclusive to Nayaka, nor to India. Many studies of indigenous communities show the high costs of the loss of valuable knowledge and social ties, alongside disappointment by the actual level of school education gained in return (e.g., see Pandya 2005;Sedwal and Kamat 2008;Sujatha 2002;Veerbhadranaika et al 2012 for India; see also Brave Hearth et al 2011;Hays 2016 for the Americas and Namibia, respectively). Realizing the risks and benefits, it seems that Nayaka parents express in their words and actions a realistic attitude toward schooling.…”

“…Yet, parents are often singled out as a central reason for children's difficulties at school and are blamed for hampering children's social upliftment (e.g., Balagopalan and Subrahmanian 2003;Sedwal and Kamat 2008;Sujatha 2002;Veerbhadranaika et al 2012; see also Arteaga and Glewwe 2014 about Peru). This tension between two central arenas of socialization, the home and the school, has been argued to be the source of major difficulties and stress for young people of marginalized societies around the world (e.g., Archuleta et al 2000;Deloria and Wildcat 2001;Pandya 2005;Tom et al 2019). It highlights a dissonance between different views of what child development is, and what kinds of abilities such development is meant to construct.…”