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The Anthropology of Learning in Childhood David F. Lancy, John Bock, and Suzanne Gaskins, eds. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2010. Illustrations, bibliography, index. 483 pp. $90.00. ISBN: 9780759113220
David Lancy, John Bock, and Suzanne Gaskins make an important contribution to our understanding of children's learning through a unique collection of eighteen essays written by archeologists, cultural anthropologists, evolutionary anthropologists, and linguists. This volume is noteworthy for its comprehensiveness including chapters examining the archeological record, nonhuman primates, traditional societies, and children's learning in adverse environments. The scope and depth of this work brings to the fore a variety of important, but too often understudied, aspects of children's learning. I highly recommend this book to scholars, students, and practitioners in the social sciences, education, and human services. A few examples and key themes illustrate this book's importance and the rich discussions in its many excellent chapters.
Consider the material on children's learning emerging from an evolutionary context. Lancy, Bock, and Gaskins's anthropological focus on children's learning broadens our perspective of the evolutionary context of human learning. The lengthy period of immaturity experienced by humans is a product of evolution. Bock reviews the evolutionary ecology of childhood and how the history of adaptation plays out in various contemporary contexts. He argues that our physical maturation and cognitive development are interactively responsive to social, cultural, and ecological influences. Human history has led to learning in childhood that is broadly patterned and highly responsive to particular environments.
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