On Inuit Teaching and Learning Versus Schooling: A Personal Narrative

• In Event: 54.080 - Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: 54.080-20 - CANCELLED: Stories of Love and Loss From Inuit, Tajik, Buddhist, and Rural American Perspectives: Living Well in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This paper is a personal narrative by an Inuk artist and hunter about the critical differences between an education learned from elders that connected him to his family, to the land, and to a sense of responsibility for their well being, vs formal education. "This new idea of education to Inuit, came with a different sense of being smart too. Inuit don't really have a word for “smart.” The closest thing I can think about it is “silatujuq” which can be roughly translated as someone who is conscious about his whole environment and responds to it calmly. He understands his world. Someone who is smart [in Inuit culture] is someone with the most common sense, and is the most helpful, in some way an enlightened person. This word silatujuq comes with a serious sense of duty for the community, family and friends, [someone who] will do anything to help and risk his life. Now, maybe I am mistaken, but this concept of being silatujuq is not taught in schools; [in school] the smartness comes from being able to perform tasks well through paper. Knowledge is only knowledge unless you use the [it] for the betterment of your family and community."

Author

• Tommy Akulukjuk