The aims of education are determined by society, by the ideals it holds dear and the vision of the future

that it hopes to promote or preserve.

Education in pre-historic times: Informal yet lasting

Learning contents: Education was practical. The young were taught how to manipulate tools, how
to hunt and gather, how to fish, how to cultivate crops and how to build and maintain a house. The
activities were determined by both individual and social needs.

Teachers: Adults served as examples, instructing and demonstrating skills.

Teaching methods: The young learned through observation and imitation, through games and
through their participation in initiation ceremonies and other aspects of their communal life.

School organization: The classroom was outdoors.

Specificities: The learning took place naturally with little constraint and continued throughout life.
This education allowed the young to be integrated into their community throughout the education
process, which demonstrated a broader education than nowadays.
Children's plays reflect the adult world. For example, Fulani children play a game of hyena, sheep and
shepherd, or play with clay or wooden toys representing animals and plants. In West Africa, traditional
education is based on informal apprenticeship with kin and early participation in the work force. Special
skills, such as medicine, music, crafts, etc. are acquired through more formal apprenticeship with
specialized persons. Other special skills, such as tree felling, hunting, and metallurgy are taught by
religious leaders during initiation ceremonies. Among the Fulani of northern Senegal, children start
pastoral duties at a very young age (5-6), progressing naturally from their plays to actually guarding
calves in the compound. In almost all groups, the father teaches his sons by going out with them first,
then giving hands-on responsibility, and the knowledge is already firmly established by ages 9 or 10, for
example among the Samburu of Kenya, and the Tallensi of southwestern Burkina Faso/northeastern
Ghana.

The knowledge of range and livestock husbandry among the Somali is passed on as young boys (7-8
years) are taken to camel camps and learn from first hand experience which grasses are good, noxious,
etc.(unfortunately no mention was made of how Somali girls learn to guard shoats and latter cattle).

At 8-10 years old, Wodaabe children start to learn about herding by being assigned to watch over calves
near the camp. Between 10-12 years they start to herd shoats alone in the bush, and at 15 they herd
cattle on their own. Wodaabe girls start at 9-10 years to make butter, at 11-12 years to pound millet,
and at 14-15 years to milk cows. Among the Lozi of Zimbabwe, young boys and girls would go to the
cattle posts in the wet season to herd cattle and to be “hardened and taught morals and tribal law.” The
Fulani of Mauritania say that the initiation of the pastoralist begins at the entrance to the livestock kraal,
and ends at its exit, ie at age 63. They consider pastoral education to encompass three phases:
“initiation” which takes the first 21 years, “practice” which takes the next 21 years, and “teaching”
which takes the last 21 years.

Traditional education has four characteristics: 1) it is completely effective, i.e. the child learns all he/she
needs to know to become a functioning adult; 2) although the education involves harsh trials and
ordeals, every child who survives them is allowed to “graduate”; 3) the cost of education (e.g. paying
masters and religious leaders) is not prohibitive; and 4) children are not totally withdrawn from the work
force.
Ancient Rome

Since ancient times, mothers have played an important role in the family education of their children,
especially in ancient feudal society. However, ancient Rome is the opposite. They believe that father is
a symbol of strength. They regard strong personality, rights and etiquette as criterion, and believe
they have supreme rights and responsibilities for the education of children.Words and deeds laid the
father's position in family education

Cultivation of survival skills

In the ancient Roman family life, when the child’s childhood was over, his father took over his education
and formed a father-son companionship relationship. Usually, the father teaches children various
survival skills in their daily lives and takes them to the field to work. In labor, they learn the knowledge
of land measurement and calculation. "Throughout the youth, they spent the hard, frugal and diligent
life, and opened the barren hills of Sabin until the planting harvest". The old Cartew so described. There
was no school education in early Rome, and family education was particularly important. The father is a
symbol of authority, and his words and deeds and his accumulated knowledge deeply influence the next
generation. Little Pliny’s explanation of education is easy to understand:" For our ancestors, education is
both an eye thing and an ear thing. Through the observation of the elders, young people learn what they
are going to do soon, and know what they should do when they educate their next generations.
Everyone takes his father as a teacher." " Sit at the gate and learn from what you see and hear."

Physical and mental training

As the head of the family, the father, in addition to teaching children the survival skills, must also
cultivate the child's body and mind. In 1762, Rousseau described sports in "Ai Mier" as: Physical training
and mental training. Not surprisingly, in addition to learning survival skills from fathers, physical training
has become part of ancient Roman children’s daily education. The father should teach children running,
boxing, wrestling, hunting, swimming, etc. Marcus Terentius Varro described her exercise as: The horse
riding has no saddle... all kinds of hardships are to exercise the child's physique. With a strong body, it is
possible to fight for good and fight for the country on the battlefield.In the twentieth section of “the old
Cartew ”, Plutarch made a careful description: “Cartew personally served as a child's teacher, teaching
his son the Roman law, to throw a discus, to wear a helmet and ride a helmet to fight, and teaching him
to punch, to withstand the heat and summer exercise, to chase the waves in the river. Cartew also
personally wrote a history book in large letters to familiarize his son with the past of his country......
Cartew took great efforts to cultivate the virtues of his son, just like polishing an outstanding work”. In
addition, the father also uses epic, folk songs and other literacy training for children. At the dinner table,
sing the ballads of early Rome literature with children of the same age. Cicero once said that when
children were older, they were required to recite the “lex duodecim tabularum”, to remember their
obligations as citizens, and to train them in memory and expression.
Kenya
It was a given that fathers did not develop the profound bonds with their children that mothers did,
because their role was confined to that of a secondary parent who existed, as a consequence of work, at
a slight distance from the family.

As time ticked on and the complexity of human life increased, another stage of human life-history
evolved: the adolescent. This was a period of learning and exploration before the distractions that
accompany sexual maturity start to emerge. With this individual, fathers truly came into their own. For
there was much to teach an adolescent about the rules of cooperation, the skills of the hunt, the
production of tools, and the knowledge of the landscape and its inhabitants. Mothers, still focused on
the production of the next child, would be restricted in the amount of hands-on life experience they
could give their teenagers, so it was dad who became the teacher.

Among the Kipsigis tribe in Kenya, fathers teach their sons about the practical and economic aspects of
tea farming. From the age of nine or 10, boys are taken into the fields to learn the necessary practical
skills of producing a viable crop, but in addition – and perhaps more vitally – they are allowed to join
their fathers at the male-only social events where the deals are made, ensuring that they also have the
negotiation skills and the necessary relationships that are vital to success in this tough, marginal habitat.

In contrast, children of the Aka tribe of both sexes join their fathers in the net hunts that take place daily
in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Aka men are arguably the most hands-on
fathers in the world, spending nearly half their waking time in actual physical contact with their children.
This enables them to pass on the complex stalking and catching skills of the net hunt, but also teaches
sons about their role as co-parent to any future children.

PREHISTORIC TIMES
In the harsh savannah plains of the East African Rift Valley, it was natural to bring your children
to such daily tasks, perhaps so they could observe and learn.
This is not surprising, when one considers the wealth of ethnographic evidence from modern,
culturally distinct human societies. Babies and children are most often seen as the lowliest
members of their social and family groups. They are often expected to contribute to activities
that support the mother, and the wider family group, according to their abilities. In many
societies, small boys tend to help with herding, while young girls are preferred as babysitters.
Interestingly, adult tools – like axes, knives, machetes, even guns – are often freely available to
children as a way of learning.

So, if we picture the scene at Melka Kunture, the children observing the butchery
were probably allowed to handle stone tools and practice their skills on discarded
pieces of carcass while staying out of the way of the fully-occupied adults. This
was their school room, and the curriculum was the acquisition of survival skills.
There was little time or space to simply be a child, in the sense that we would
recognise today.