Beyond Schools: Multisensory Learning and Knowledge Acquisition in Informal Contexts—Perspectives from Rural Indonesia

Abstract

It is not a new finding that much human learning takes place implicitly outside of educational institutions in informal, everyday contexts, yet these learning processes receive comparatively little systematic attention within the current anthropology of learning, education and schools. Based on long-term social anthropological research in a peasant community in rural Indonesia (Sulawesi), the article will address the complex multisensory forms of learning through which children acquire a large part of their competencies and their extensive environmental and agricultural knowledge. I will focus on the mixed-age “communities of practices” in which this knowledge is transmitted and acquired and show that affective bonds to peers and adults influence to a large extent which out-of-school areas of competence a child acquires. Building on the “embodied capital theory.” I argue that children in rural areas obtain a complex form of “ecological literacy” that encompasses not only a rich knowledge about the local ecosystems and agri- as well as horticultural processes but also a particular formation of the senses and the physical body in general (muscle size and memory, physical strength, coordination, balance, and motor skills). I shall conclude with some critical reflections on the general devaluation of the extra-curricular, non-formal, and environmental forms of learning, which can be observed not only in Indonesia but also worldwide and seems to be closely related to the global spread of Western psychological theory models about the healthy socio-emotional and cognitive development of children, supported by global institutions like UNICEF, World Bank, and Save the Children. For years, a constant increase of early childhood development programs can be observed, which aim at improving children’s school readiness, particularly in low-income countries, in order to enhance the future prospect of children. These programs, however, go hand in hand with the devaluation and oppression of indigenous knowledge systems and thus often worsen the future prospects of younger people.