Other ways of being, other ways of learning

Last year I had the pleasure of writing an essay on the Dene. The Dene are a group of aboriginals that live in the Canadian sub-arctic. They were one of the first native groups in the modern era to call for full self-government, autonomy, and de-colonization. (See the 1975 Dene Declaration). The struggle continues, of course.

The thing I was most struck by was the different attitude the Dene traditionally have towards learning. One thing that cropped up over and over again as I was reasearching them was the idea of 'experiential learning' -- the Dene think it's very important to learn things yourself, through experience, by trying and figuring them out yourself. Telling others what to do is considered very rude, if not downright immoral.

This means that didactic, passively-received, propositional learning (i.e. lectures, etc.) is just not an option when it comes to education, and the task of teaching young people what they need to know in order to live. Here's an excerpt from my essay:

"It is therefore easy to see why the Dene use stories to communicate more abstract lessons about values, morality, spirituality, etc. Stories communicate indirectly, in non-deterministic ways, leaving their hearers free to form their own conclusions. They allow elders to communicate truths without formulating these truths into absolute, propositional statements. Presenting such absolute, specific statements and declaring them to be true would be considered a form of pride among the Dene. More importantly, such statements would deny the listener the chance to learn; even if she accepted them, she would not actually 'know' them, since they would simply be a form of second-hand knowledge. For the Dene, "to explain too much is to steal a person's opportunity to learn." These stories are intended to provoke and provide the context for thought, for learning, for true knowledge acquisition through direct perception. As one Dene told one anthropologist that kept asking for explanations, "we tell you these stories for you to think with, as they were given to me for me to think with."

If any of this intrigues you, you can read my entire essay here.