ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some of the themes that appear to be fairly common across the different traditions examined and try to determine what lessons might be learned from these common themes. This needs to be done with the understanding that whatever differences there are among and between different cultures, as the proverb says, all human societies are fundamentally dealing with the same sets of challenges, and are generally doing so in remarkably similar ways. Related to the community-based focus of many non-western educational traditions is the broadly shared concern with what might be called civic education. The role of language plays a surprisingly important part in almost all non-western educational traditions. One aspect of 'indigenous knowledge' that is not commonly discussed is that of language, an oversight insofar as most kinds of 'indigenous knowledge' are preserved only in particular languages.
