Schooling and local environmental knowledge: Do they complement or substitute each other?

Are the Young Less Knowledgeable? Local Knowledge of Natural Remedies and Its Transformations in the Andean Highlands

“…That study demonstrated that there was both more elaborate knowledge about culture-bound illnesses and a higher preference for natural remedies over pharmaceuticals at the former site. These results are quite surprising, since Pitumarca is the site where there is a higher presence not only of biomedicine, but also of other factors of acculturation generally reported in the literature to account for a loss of knowledge about natural remedies such as formal education (Zent 2001;Quinlan and Quinlan 2007;Reyes-García et al 2010;Wyndham 2010) and the market economy (Alcorn 1999;Reyes-García et al 2005). The higher proportion of externally versus locally grown plants found in Pitumarca as compared to Waca Playa reveals that Pitumarquinos enriched their local therapeutic resource basis by including more elements from other ecological belts.…”

‘I used to be ashamed’. The influence of an educational program on tribal and non-tribal children's knowledge and valuation of wild food plants

“…This clearly shows that knowledge and practice are intrinsically related; knowledge is, to a large extent, acquired or reinforced through practice. As Reyes-García et al (2010) asserted, a contextualized learning curricula should stimulate children to acquire knowledge through the establishment of a direct link between theory and practice, which is certainly the case with the ECS program. Participation in the ECS appears to have had an effect on wild food plant collection for home consumption: 79% of the children who participated in the program said that they collect these plants, compared with 72% of the children that did not participate.…”

“…Indeed, it has been reported across the world that formal schooling frequently undermines the traditional values and practices of indigenous and local communities (Reyes-García et al, 2010); for example, among indigenous societies in the Pacific Northwest of North America (Turner, 2003), among Arawakan communities in the Venezuelan Amazonia (Hoffmann, 2003), and among Luo people in Western Kenya (Sternberg et al, 2001). For this reason, the Community Agrobiodiversity Centre (CAbC) of the M.S.…”

“…tribal, non-tribal rural, and non-tribal urban) in activities including music and theater, plant specimen collection, gardening, and visits to wildlife sanctuaries on weekends and during holidays. It has been argued (Reyes-García et al, 2010) that such 'contextualized schooling' not only improves local environmental knowledge and school performance among children, but also can counteract the loss of traditional knowledge and bio-cultural heritage.…”

Denis Heyck: Schools in the Forest. How Grassroots Education Brought Political Empowerment to the Brazilian Amazon

“…For example, the author does not cite currently well-known theories on education, such as contextualized learning. Freire was, no doubt, a significant influence for Projecto Seringueiro, but many other researchers have subsequently studied how the use of familiar learning styles and topics, such as local environmental knowledge, enhances comprehension of school content (see, for example, Castagno and Braboy 2008;Lipka et al 2001;Reyes-García et al 2010). Many scholars have argued that, especially in rural and indigenous contexts, the inclusion of teaching methods such as group workshops, fieldtrips, hands-on experience, or the participation of parents and elders in instruction enhances learning and produces better school achievement levels than standard textbook and classroom instruction (Castagno and Braboy 2008).…”