learning

 Cultures have persisted for thousands of years without agriculture, without industrializing, without banking, and without literacy, but there has never een a culture, so far as we know, without music, stories, and poems.  Nor has there ever been a long term culture without an educational enterprise, and that education has always moved in two directions: back, to learn the stories of the past and get them right, and forward, to transcent the past and create a more viable future.

Learning Native Wisdom - Gary Holthaus