ABSTRACT
Institutional schooling as the primary venue for children's learning is a very recent historical phenomenon; as Sutton points out, "the worldwide institutionalization of children in schools may rank among the most profound forces of global cultural change of the twentieth century". Historically, advocates of universal schooling have shared several key assumptions and attitudes with Christian missionaries: that the new knowledge and systems they are bringing are an unalloyed good; that all people worldwide should adopt these systems in essentially the same form; and that nothing of importance is lost when old understandings and practices are abandoned and replaced with the new. Henrich et al. have pointed out the disconnect between anthropology and the other behavioral sciences—including cognitive science, educational psychology, and child development studies—which frequently make universal statements about human nature, cognition, development, and behavior based on observations limited to "Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD)" societies.
