Modes of Learning in Indigenous Education - Assignment Example

According to Bopp et al. (2004), indigenous education encompasses various modes of learning. For indigenous people, education was experienced through a lifelong learning. For instance, learning passed from and through one’s people and past, into the present day, and focusing toward a better and prosperous future for the future generations. Storytelling was one of the modes of education and learning (Bopp et al., 2004). Indigenous approaches to storytelling Bopp et al. (2004) argues that the indigenous people linked human imagination, identity, and storytelling intimately with the land, and the earth, as the center of humanity. The linkage came with visualization and representation of narrative and storytelling. According to Bopp et al. (2004), storytelling provided landscape and identity to the indigenous people as well as race and collective memory of the people. Through storytelling, the people got to identify with their culture, community, landscape and race (Bopp et al., 2004). In reference to Bopp et al. (2004), landscape and identity, the ancient Pueblo people, for example, depended upon community collective memory through continuous generations. The continuous generations with collective memory were expected to uphold and transmit an entire community’s culture and a worldview with complete with and proven survival strategies. The oral story or narrative, hence, became the medium of maintenance of culture, knowledge and belief of the indigenous people, for example, the complexity Pueblo beliefs and knowledge (Bopp et al., 2004). Whatever the subject or event, Bopp et al (2004) argues that the ancient and indigenous people observed the world and themselves within that part of the world or just the world as part of an ancient or indigenous, continuous story that constituted countless bundles and packages of other stories. To the ancient people, everything became a story, and everything was transmitted through a story. Every person in the community was obliged to listen to and recall the narrative stories and accounts. Remembering and retelling the stories was a continuous communal process (Bopp et al., 2004). In the indigenous societies, Bopp et al. (2004) says that, together the community could piece together and sense fully the Pueblo oral tradition and make it into a communal truth. The accounts and stories comprised of information about the landscape features and the behaviors and features of all creatures. Stories often mention exact locations and specific geographical and landscape features, located in recent times of the community, long time and long, long time ago. The landscape reinforced accuracy and continuity of oral narratives and stories. For the Pueblo community and people, the persistent use of routes journeyed within their lands served to “create an exceptional and unique relationship between the actual, everyday world and ritual-mythic world” (Bopp et al., 2004). Land and the community landscape was the center of humanity. Stories began as early as a child was born, for example, in the pueblo society, when children were taken outside to identify with the sky and its features. Stories came along with a sense of belonging and identity to the community. For the Pueblo community, the landscape lies at the center of identity and belief. This, possibly, is the reason they have strong reactions and responses to any alterations to the landscape that may involve resource development, and that may result into land destruction (Bopp et al., 2004). Indigenously, storytelling always included listeners (Bopp et al., 2004). It is through stories that the people constructed and identified with their people. Stories identified individuals within their families, as members of certain extended families, or as clan and community members. Storytelling, according to Bopp et al. (2004), worked on varied levels as an ongoing procedure and process and every story connected every place in the community’s landscape. According to the old people, if one could remember the stories then, they would be all right; just remembering the stories was very significant part of community approach (Bopp et al., 2004). Indigenous methods for Learning, teaching, and sharing knowledge Indigenous science was an accumulated sanctuary of knowledge (Bopp et al., 2004). The science required preparation of the heart and mind for learning, teaching and sharing information. Appreciation of science was significant and was considered as a complementary way of learning, teaching, explaining, knowing, exploring, and knowing the natural world in the indigenous societies. Indigenous people sought knowledge through communal and individual experience, observation, and through their visions, ceremonies, and their spirits (Bopp et al., 2004). Education necessitated accessing information from all available sources to maintain moral and ethical community relationships. Indigenously, stories were used as teaching tools and techniques (Bopp et al., 2004). The stories had principles that formed theoretical framework for teaching and learning. These principles included responsibility, reciprocity, respect, reverence, interrelatedness, holism, and synergy. When combined, the framework constructed meaning from stories that would then be used in educational and learning contexts. The narrators crafted numerous stories to guide educators and learners to educate the mind, body, heart, and spirit (Bopp et al., 2004). In reference to Bopp et al. (2004), indigenous science, as the main source of learning, teaching and knowledge sharing, included examination of basic questions, like the nature of thought, language, and perception. Additionally, science explored questions like the time movement, nature of human feeling and knowing, the nature of human and community relationship, and a myriad of other questions about the human and community natural reality (Bopp et al., 2004). Indigenous science came from collective inheritance and heritage of human experience with their natural world. It mapped reality from the generations of human experiences that gave rise to a diversity of technologies for fishing, hunting, gathering, communicating, making art, building, visioning, being and healing (Bopp et al., 2004). In addition to myths and stories, gifts also constituted large portions of learning, teaching and knowledge sharing. Sharing of gifts was essential for indigenous education. Everybody has a gift to identify with and these gifts from the supreme Creator (Bopp et al., 2004). Most indigenous communities believed that the gifts were blessed by the Creator, and to be born with a gift provided by the Creator. The people’s life’s journeys and activities would revolve around coming to realize that creator-given gift. Each person, therefore, learned and moved towards the wholeness, which they found themselves (Bopp et al., 2004). References Bopp, Judie et al. (2004). The Sacred Tree: Reflections on Native American Spirituality. Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus Press Read More