Margaret Mead and Coming of Age to Samoa: a reflection on our Education
Carlos Moreno

This paper is a reflection on Margaret Mead's book Coming of age in Samoa and the way she critically compared Samoan and Western educational systems. I will first analyse the reasons for her research in Samoa and the connections with 'the teenage struggle' in our society. Then, I will argue that the ways in which we live and learn about the world, and relate to each other, are strongly linked to the cultural values of our society - values we consider as 'normal'. Finally, I will state my personal point of view on the topic and outline Mead's further contributions to research in social anthropology.

Mead was concerned with how human character is modified through different cultural patterns. While teenage struggles are often explained in scientific terms as related to biology and psychology, she focuses on the relevance of social context in teenagers' behaviour. Mead argues that sexual transition peculiarities - the point at which a child becomes an adolescent and possibly sexually active - are due to social and cultural factors more than to biological processes. Throughout her research Mead was interested in comparing the experiences of Samoan and Western adolescents, including their differing experiences of education. In Samoa, according to Mead, there is no pressure on the 'slow' pupil; no feelings of envy, rivalry, impotence and frustration are developed as all have their own pace to learn: there are no 'losers' or 'winners', simply students with different capacities and expectations. This fact could provide some hints in the analysis of school violence, particularly bullying, and can be a way for anthropologists to approach the study of our own societies and the meaning of "senseless violence"* (Blok 2000), as will be discussed below. Another important aspect is the relevance of the learning activity to the learners' lives. In Mead's view, the education received by Samoan teens was based on the basic knowledge they needed to survive in and feel part of the community. In contrast, she argues, Western education focuses too much on things that students consider irrelevant to their lives (social sciences, maths, chemistry or physics); personal initiative, autonomous learning and active involvement in citizenship activities are discouraged, contributing to the emotional difficulties that Mead associates with being a Western teenager. She thus provides a possible cause of school violence.

Historically speaking, the educational "massification" (Turner 2003: 36) that happened after industrialisation gives a clue to the roots of these issues. Its two major problems were, firstly, that the education system was producing professionals who were "overeducated for the economic positions available in the labour market" (Turner 2003: 246) and who became resentful citizens, blaming the state for their lack of opportunities. Secondly, the elites were worried about the enhancement of critical thinking on political matters brought by education. This is why some authoritarian leaders "reduced funding for schools, fired teachers, and closed universities" (Turner 2003: 246). Even in democratic states, a homogenised curriculum, over-crowded classrooms and little individual attention detract from the learning experience and allow (or maybe even encourage?) contradictory messages - consumerism, individualism, superficiality - about what 'really' matters in life. What is remarkable in Mead's analysis is the idea that the main cause of teenagers' struggles is the existence of conflicting social rules and the belief that each one has to make his/her own choices - and that he/she is free to do so. This point is further supported by the fact that a child brought up with non-conventional understandings of body and society often experiences rejection and isolation - despite the idea that people are free to choose how to behave. This shows how powerful social conventions are. In this case accusations of behaving abnormally or unnaturally can make the child feel isolated and lonely, and in some cases even aggressive towards those who are 'normal'. This is another point to take into account when analysing school violence.

There are, however, some weaknesses in Mead's work. The value of her comparison of common situations in Western and Samoan cultures is limited as the methods used to analyse the two societies did not follow the same patterns: while comparison is made between Samoan girls and boys, both sexes are put into the same bag in the Western context, as if gender was not important in Western society. Also, differences in familiar habits and living conditions are completely ignored. Mead's main aim was to suggest an effective cultural analysis of the social situation of teenagers in the USA from a cross-cultural viewpoint. As Marcus and Fisher (1986) remark, Mead would have been successful in achieving this aim had she conducted fieldwork in her own culture to support her conclusions.** Mead's comments on the importance of female anthropologists in fieldwork also deserve some attention. They were needed so that, she argued, both sides (male and female) of the story could be told. From her viewpoint, in the field of cultural analysis an anthropologist (especially a female one) is not at risk of letting his/her subjectivity tell the story in an 'ambiguous' way. In this particular aspect the remarks made by Okely and Callaway (1992) are of particular importance as they highlight that "these studies of selves, using gender as the focus of analysis, bring new readings of our own society. These readings expose a gendered sub-text between the lines of dominant (no less gendered) version" (Okely et al. 1992: 44). In other words, gender plays a role in telling the story of any society.

In conclusion, it is important to acknowledge the value of Margaret Mead's main argument in this book, which underlines the power of cultural patterns and the impossibility of suppressing teenage struggles as long as we continue to share with children new behaviour patterns to which adult society gives no space of action. Boas expressed this very well in the preface toComing of Age in Samoa where he asserted that what is attributable to human nature was nothing more than a reaction to the restrictions imposed by our own culture. This supports the theory that cultural patterns rule over innate nature, at least in Western society.

* What Blok is referring to is the cultural dimensions of violence, the understanding of violence primarily in utilitarian, 'rational' terms, of means and ends in order to discover its significance. ** "(...) Serious ethnography has been done domestically without any reference to parallel work abroad, or with invoking work abroad only in an ad hoc, illustrative manner (...) [this] is the case of Margaret Mead." (Marcus & Fisher 1986: 138)

References

Blok, A. (2000) The Enigma of Senseless Violence. Oxford: Berg

Marcus, G. and Fisher, M. (1986) 'Two Contemporary Techniques of Cultural Critique' inAnthropology as Cultural Critique. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Mead, M. (1928) Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: Harper Collins

Okely, J. & Callaway, H. (1992) 'Gender Implications in Fieldwork and Texts' in Anthropology and Autobiography. London: Routledge

Turner, J. H. (2003) Human Institutions: A Theory of Societal Evolution. London: Rowman & Littlefield

REVIEW OF COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF PRIMITIVE YOUTH FOR WESTERN CIVILISATION

In her Samoan field-work Dr. Mead deliberately set herself a task distinct from the traditional ethnographer’s. Ignoring the conventional descriptive pattern, she concentrated on the individual’s reactions to his social setting, – specifically, the adolescent girl’s adjustment. She tried to become intimately acquainted with the girls of three contiguous villages on the island of Tau and to study their psychological problems. The technique of her case study is outlined in Appendix 11 (pp. 250-265), which might more suitably appear as an introduction. The author further departs from ordinary practice in pointing a moral. One of her principal theses is that the sexually uninhibited Samoan adolescent is thereby freed from the stress and strain characteristic of our adolescents, hence these disturbances are not rooted in original nature, but in the repressive agencies of our society. Therefore, – but I am afraid Dr. Mead has not been quite ingenuous in her applied anthropology and fortunately readers of this journal are not concerned with pedagogical sermonizing.
However, there is one basic point that concerns us. Miss Mead’s graphic picture of Polynesian free love is convincing. It falls in line with the reports of earlier travelers; it is supported by Dr. Handy’s evidence from the Marquesas; and from another Oceanian area we have Dr. Malinowski’s Trobriand observations. Nevertheless, this is not the whole story. The author knows it (p. 98) and even enlarges on it – in an appendix. There we read as follows (p. 273 f.):
But it is only fair to point out that Samoan culture, before white influence, was less flexible and dealt less kindly with the individual aberrant. Aboriginal Samoa was harder on the girl sex delinquent than is present-day Samoa. And the reader must not mistake the conditions which have been described for the aboriginal ones, nor for typical primitive ones. Present-day Samoan civilization is simply the result of the fortuitous and on the whole fortunate impetus of a complex, intrusive culture upon a simpler and most hospitable indigenous one …
Deviations from chastity were formerly punished in the case of girls by a very severe beating and a stigmatizing shaving of the head … The girl whose sex activities are frowned upon by her family is in a far better position than that of her great-grandmother. The navy has prohibited, the church has interdicted the defloration ceremony, formerly an inseparable part of the marriages of girls of rank; and thus the most potent inducement to virginity has been abolished. If for these cruel and primitive methods of enforcing a stricter régime there had been substituted a religious system which seriously branded the sex offender, or a legal system which prosecuted and punished her, then the new hybrid civilization might have been as heavily fraught with possibilities of conflict as the old civilization undoubtedly was.11.Reviewer’s italics.
How are the two pictures to be reconciled? On the one hand, we are shown licensed freedom precluding mental derangements; on the other, we see all girls of rank originally subjected to the defloration rite and thetaupo liable to the death penalty for unchastity. If it is only modern Samoa that connives at free love, it may still remain true that adolescence is not necessarily a quasi-pathological condition; but the socialapplications become banal. We have long known that the Middle Westerner in Greenwich Village snaps his fingers at Main Street, that the British bourgeois is quite himself somewheres east of Suez. In other words, it is one thing to have a community treat the individual’s sex life as an individual matter when the society is in a normal state; quite another, to find it unconcerned with his amours when abnormal contacts destroy old standards and fail to impose substitutes. The reformer must face the question whether any normal society can and will practice that lofty detachment found in Samoa nowadays.
But Dr. Mead’s pedagogical theses, whether sound or not, should not obscure her solid contributions to ethnographic fact and method. Her picture of child life is among the most vivid I know. The six-year old girl impressed into nursery service and bullied into indulgence by her squalling ward (pp. 22-24); the child fleeing from a cruel parent to the sanctuary of a near-by relative’s household (p. 43); the irksomeness of premature chieftainship (p. 36), – these will linger in memory. Many important details are brought out incidentally, such as the brother-sister taboo (p. 174), the functions of the young men’s society (p. 33 f.), the bond created between boys circumcised at the same time (p. 69), the communism of borrowing (p. 125). Along with other records from the same general area Dr. Mead’s account (e.g., 41f., 188) throws doubt on a proposition I have hitherto vigorously maintained, viz., the universality of the individual family. The question involved is not a t all that of consanguinity, but of a differential bond between a restricted group – mother, child, mother’s spouse – as against the rest of the universe. In Polynesia this bond does seem to be exceptionally loose and to superseded Ijy more widely diffused ties.
On some points made earlier. Mead I must frankly avow skepticism. It is hard to believe that all but the youngest boys and girls should fail to use ordinary kinship terms correctly (p. 132); or, in an absolute way, that Samoan children do not learn to work through learning to play (p. 226). It is hard to understand how certain conclusions could have been arrived at. Says Dr. Mead:
The Samoan girl never tastes the rewards of romantic love as we know it … (p. 211).
Query: What, never? And: Who are “we?” Unless the Samoans are different from other Polynesians, they indulged in the luxury of romantic love precisely like other folk, to wit, in their fiction. Only after the most thoroughgoing search in Samoan folk-literature had yielded no trace of the sentiment, should I feel disposed to accept a negative result. Finally, perhaps from a Plains Indian bias, I am not convinced by Dr. Mead’s picture of the “low level of appreciation of personality differences” (p. 221). With due regard to the insolence of seniority and of caste, I suspect that here, too, the normal aspect of ancient Samoan life has been blurred by the blighting contact with European civilization. “The new influences have drawn the teeth of the old culture” (p. 276). When tattooing declines, the differences in fortitude on the victims’, or in skill on the artists’, part would naturally fade away; and so with other aspects of aboriginal life. Plains Indians no longer go on the warpath; but the record of their mad competitive strivings has remained, and modern equivalents, though diluted, are not lacking. Would a similar, i. e., historical, approach to Samoa yield comparable results? I deny nothing; I am asking for information.
These reservations should not be taken to obscure the value of Dr. Mead’s achievement. Dealing with problems incomparably subtler than those which usually engage the ethnographer’s attention, she has not merely added much in the way of illuminating information but also illustrated a new method of study that is bound to find followers and to yield an even richer harvest.
ABOUT THIS ARTICLE
This article originally appeared in American Anthropologist July 1929, Volume 31(3):532–534.
ROBERT H. LOWIE (1883–1957) was an Austrian born American anthropologist.