Fundamental Differences between?

Question

What are the fundamental differences between Western philosophies and Native North American ways of knowing? (Generally, how does each culture view the world of education?) How can you incorporate seemingly different ways of knowing in a cirriculum?

Answer 1

the art of survival, be it abstract, or in your face, and knowledge only goes so far, then from there imagination takes it on.

Answer 2

One difference would be that Native North Americans conceptualize "nature" in terms of people or spirits that have intentions and purposes ... while modern Western philosophies tend to conceptualize it in terms of dead, impersonal "forces" or in terms of "machine" metaphors (including the computer metaphor) that are being ruled by impersonal, "objective" "laws".

It´s just different ways of conceptualizing nature, the cosmos and society - a people metaphor and a machine metaphor, but both are taken to be true instead of as "mere" metaphors (which can be looked upon as some sort of truth as well).

Both are useful for different kinds of things, but I think although it might look differently now, in the long run, it will be the people metaphor not the machine metaphor that will endure - it has only seemingly been eliminated from science.

Education ... is practical apprenticeship with practitioners and rite of passage guided through mythical stories of creation with the Native NA´s, and formal education by specialized teachers (often distinct from practitioners) in separated, state-operated institutions in western / modern society; the focus here is on formal, not practical and metaphorical skills, especially in law, business, philosophy, mathematics and cybernetics.

You can incorporate seemingly different ways of knowing into a curriculum by finding out what all ways of knowing share, part of which which mayb be viewed as social reproduction and symbolic representations of models of the world based upon comparisons, mappings and blends, whether they be "metaphorical", "fantastic" (such as gods with partially human and partially animal qualities), or "literal" and "deductive" (such as philosophical theories, roman law or mathematics).

The family is the basis of Native North American ways of living and knowing, while in the west, the family is being dissolved into individuals with relationships between the sexes and the generations becoming more and more instable, and birth rates are declining ... an aging civilization in decline, technically advanced but undermining its human base, and europe is leading in that decline.

Just my point of view.