Education for Food Gathering

Ideal education should include life before the microwave. 

Tik Tok and YouTube are the new initiation schools, but there are still some pockets in the world where kids are initiated into their world, determined by the following:

Land: is it near rivers, oceans, forests, mountains, prairie or deserts?

Food: how to collect food from the above sources.

Transport: in the desert, camels are a form of transport. Lesotho is a country full of mountains so kids ride donkeys. I once saw a woman speeding by on a donkey. Locals were amused by my surprise.

Games: a tree is a whole town council. In ancient Nigeria, the palm tree provided everything people needed, even palm wine. Trees also provide sticks for boys looking after cattle. That’s where they learn the game of stick fighting.

Language: all this is in the language.

THE SCHOOL SYSTEM

The European system of education is rooted in money. Kids are groomed to be consumers and producers of things to be sold.

However, some schools still recognize the importance of traditional systems of child development, we mentioned above. Camping for example. It teaches kids to survive outdoors with bare minimum. Kids in Europe and north America have swimming lessons. Kids in ocean continents like Africa and the Pacific grew up swimming and fishing.

It’s important that teachers in immigrant-based countries like Australia, Canada and U.S. to acknowledge child development in other parts of the world. This will stop labeling kids who don’t eat hamburgers, don’t know Halloween or Valentine’s Day as slow or dumb. 

It will give us time, until Tik Tok and YouTube Shorts finally engulf ‘education.’

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.