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Michelle Martinez
Anthro172AC
Group Summary
Intergroup Differences Among Native Americans In Socialization and Child Cognition:
An Ethnogenic Analysis
by Roland G. Tharp
In Tharp’s article, he focuses his study on two minority groups, Native-American
Hawaiians and Native-American Navajos, which at do not excel academically in EuropeanAmerican schools. His examination shows that the reason for this is a different way of thinking;
these minority groups grew up learning different cognitive skills from what is usually learned
through European-American teaching. He also compares the two groups to each other, noting
that the different environments that Hawaiians and Navajos grow up in shape their views of the
world. Tharp then relates his findings to the school setting wherein he explained that these
children have as much capabilities in more visual aspects of learning rather than analytical.
Teaching these minority groups in a way that they are cognitively used to learning, using the ET-R (experience, text, relationship) sequences, shows that they could learn the same material just
as well as other children. Ultimately, he theorizes that the school system in general could benefit
from learning how to teach children through adapting their normal way of teaching to other ways
of doing so.
Focusing first on the Native-Americas, Tharp introduces the idea of wholistic thinking,
which is his way of describing the dominant Native-American cognition. This way of perception
approaches a problem, the thing to be understood, as a whole as opposed to disassembling it into
pieces as in analytical thinking, the dominant Euro-American cogntion. In page 90, Tharp
explains that “in wholistic thought, the pieces derive their meaning from the pattern of the whole;
in analytic thought, the whole is revealed through the unfolding of the sections.” Whenever
Native-Americans are instructed, they are more likely to sit and watch their teacher(such as a
parent preparing a meal) until they believe they have learned the process fully. If they do not
understand something, this teacher will have to start over because they believe the child cannot
learn in a piecewise fashion. In this observation-learning complex, they must learn everything as
a whole through observation rather than through verbal instruction. For the thing to be
understood, the context must be discovered.
There are differences between the ways Hawaiian children and Navajo children grow up
and learn things. Hawaiian children grow up around big extended families. They are socialized
to be family oriented, learning and teaching each other, depending on each other for help with
routine problems and needs. Social interactions occur between people near the same age group.
Children and adults do not interact directly; rather, supervision is mediated through older
siblings. Tharp observes in page 98 that “in the Hawaiian home, emphasis is on learning from
models, shared functioning, and on direct correction of errors. Learning occurs in activity, as the
learner is engaged in performing the skill or task.” Hawaiian children learn through trial and
error with frequent feedback and assistance from their peers or those slightly older than them.
Navajos, on the other hand, do not have the same social network as Hawaiians do. Instead, they
live in widely dispersed dwellings with close access only to siblings. They usually learn
shepherding, which can be done alone and could be learned through silent visual perception.
A program was started in a Honolulu, the Kamehameha Early Education Program
(KEEP) which incorporated ideas learned about the ways that Hawaiian children are cognitively
trained. A similar program was started at a Navajo reservation school in Rough Rock, Arizona
to observe the adaptations necessary to make schooling effective for Navajo children such as a
more wholistic, visually represented thinking. Teachers taught using “E-T-R sequences”
wherein “the teacher introduces content drawn from the children’s experiences (E), followed by
text (T) material, followed by establishing relationships (R) between the two” as described in
page 99. The main difference between using this technique to teach Hawaiian and Navajo
children is that “the more wholistic orientation of the Navajo called for an overall E-T-R
sequence, rather than shorter E-T-R bursts” (p. 100). Navajo children would rather wait through
the whole story rather than stopping in the middle to learn the intricacies of part of it.
“Consideration of an entire text allows visual representation of the story’s structural
form”(p.101); this is most often represented as a circle in Navajo culture.
Through Tharp’s research, he learned that effective instructional programs for Indian
children have produced significant improvement in their sequential memory. He assumes that
Euro-American children could also benefit from wholistic thinking. Using both strategies in a
crossover pattern could benefit all children in America. These complexities in ways of thinking,
which John-Steiner (1991) termed cognitive pluralism, should be a goal of education according
to Tharp, so that schools can utilize different processes to cope with society.
Tharp’s thorough and intuitive analysis of these two minority groups has taught that
effective research on different cultures could lead to lesser ignorance in teaching strategies used
in educational institutions in America. He has provided important information that has often
been overlooked when society generalizes learning methods of students. This only proves that
the world is populated with such diverse groups of people, and Euro-American institutions
merely expect those who do not belong in the majority culture to cope up with the rest.
Contributions to popular knowledge such as these definitely would help rid our world of
ignorance, keep people open-minded about the problems that may or may not seem evident in
our society, and help minority students overcome disadvantages that are overlooked when
society looks away and takes their problems as a given.