Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how children in the rural and indigenous island Apiao learn immersed in the environment all the necessary local knowledge for daily activities. This is contrasted with formal schooling where children learn a different kind of knowledge, somehow disconnected from their living space

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses ethnographic material showing how children in the small, rural and indigenous island Apiao (Chiloé, Chile) learn crucial skills in total immersion and syntony with the local environment. From an early age they get used to the green land, the beach, the seaside and all the creatures that inhabit it, and interact with them all. Observing their parents or other adults, they imitate their actions and are eager to be assigned tasks and given responsibilities. The environment and its beings (animals, plants, etc) are the background landscape to all their actions, whether they are playing or undertaking some chores.

All children attend the rural school where they learn curricula which are unified nationwide, having little to do with local knowledge; indigenous cultural heritage is only tangentially discussed and mostly ignored. These two different types of knowledge are compared and contrasted, through ethnographic data that highlight children's different bodily and relational attitudes while at home, in the fields/beach or at school.

How can we understand and reconcile such extreme sides of learning? Is is possible to imagine formal schools that integrate traditional knowledge? And would they satisfy all parties involved?