Learning Without Lessons

Reviews / Votes

A century on from Mead, childhood is an area where the world desperately needs anthropology, and Lancy's book is a valuable resource for showing why. * Julie Spray, Childhood in the Past - An International Journal * This book is a brilliant overview of Indigenous children's learning. I recommend it to teachers and parents. It challenges thinking about children's capabilities and preferences. It challenges claims about what aspects of human development are innate and universal. * David A. Bergin, New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies * Learning Without Lessons is about the acquisition of knowledge through these natural activities children are engaged in during their family and community routines of life. Bringing these ways of learning to life in rich detail is the first goal of this terrific book by David Lancy. * Thomas S. Weisner, Anthropology and Education Quarterly. * Recommended. Graduate students and faculty only. * Choice * I found this book a brilliant overview of Indigenous children's learning. I recommend it to teachers and parents. It will stimulate a re-assessment of whether WEIRD communities are adequately child-friendly. It challenges thinking about children's capabilities and preferences. It challenges claims about what aspects of developmental psychology are innate and universal. * David A. Bergin * Lancy draws on the research on learning from a wide range of authors from general anthropology and educational anthropology, psychological anthropology, developmental psychology, comparative education, and cultural psychology. He uses ethnographic texts from the books, articles, and monographs assembled in the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) on learning, parenting, and child development. He includes a very wide range of examples and conceptual frameworks. Indeed, Lancy's reference list is a comprehensive go-to for those interested in this field. * Thomas S. Weisner * I recommend supplementing Lancy's ethnological insights with analyses of why WEIRD societies approach childhood as they do (I introduce concepts such as adultism, White Saviour Complex, and binary dualisms, contextualised with history of Western science and imperialism). A century on from Mead, childhood is an area where the world desperately needs anthropology, and Lancy's book is a valuable resource forshowing why. * Julie Spray, Childhood in the Past * I typically dog-ear the pages of a new nonfiction book related to play, the bent folds serving as markers of ideas that I wished to return to at a later time. My copy of David Lancy's new book now looks like a concertina...Lancy's book offers case after case from Indigenous communities all over the world in an almost dizzying display of ethnographic wonder, that in many communities, the ethnography of record describes not just a lack of teaching, but teaching avoidance. Instead, there is much observation, a waiting for children's own individualized readiness to join in the tasks at hand. And as children practice, they play... Playworkers and play advocates who trust in children's ability to learn will smile with recognition here-children have much to teach each other and to teach us. Grownups may do them a favor by just getting out of the way. * Anna Beresin, International Journal of Play * Learning Without Lessons is a must-read for anthropologists, educators, and anyone interested in child development across cultures. Lancy's work serves as both a tribute to Indigenous communities and a call to reevaluate the rigid frameworks of modern education. I am sure it will not be too long before I meet someone who, in a casual conversation, upon hearing that I am an anthropologist of childhood, will mention how Learning Without Lessons has deeply inspired them to think otherwise about children and education. * Francesca Mezzenzana, Current Anthropology *