Schooling and Local Knowledge for Collecting Wild Honey in South India: Balancing Multifaceted Educations?
Résumé
For indigenous populations, schooling and local knowledge
systems may be at odds. Understanding indigenous
learning systems can help mitigate conflicts between acquisition
of local ecological knowledge and academic knowledge.
Among boys and men of the Jenu Kuruba of South India, we
compare levels of schooling and local knowledge related to
wild honey collection, a central domain of male local
ecological knowledge. For boys, school attendance, but not
performance, negatively correlates with local knowledge
related to honey collecting. Men’s local knowledge for this
activity negatively correlates with years of schooling, but
their practical skills either neutrally or slightly positively