It’s well-recognised that we learn more effectively if new information is presented in a context that is familiar to us. We learn based on what we already know. This is called constructivist learning: we construct new knowledge from what we already understand. So using a framework that kids are already familiar with makes it much easier for them to accept and understand new concepts or information.
My son’s school in Nuuk teaches in Danish and Greenlandic, with equal weight given to both. It’s relatively easy to find good Danish texts for primary school-aged kids. But there are no Danish texts that I have seen with Greenlandic kids in mind. Of the more limited selection of Greenlandic primary school texts, these are certainly written with a constructivist learning model that is uniquely suited to Greenlandic kids.
Take the above example from one of my son’s second-grade maths texts. It asks the children to count the pictured items from a typical Greenlandic scene – a summer day out at the beach. A scene that is reasonably representative. The picture shows kids making sand castles, collecting seaweed, feathers, catching shrimps and fish, some of which hang drying on a frame in the background. And, in the midst of the happy scene, a young girl butchers a seal.
