How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

I think you may resonate with Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves — a book focusing on natural parenting.

Nicole Kavanaugh also has some really good stuff: http://www.thekavanaughreport.com/2016/06/practicallife2.htm...

And I like This Merry Montessori, though Lindsay is no longer posting actively: http://www.thismerrymontessori.com/?p=901

"Practical Life" is the phrase Montessorians use for the kind of real-world meaningful work described in the article. A google search for "practical life" plus a specific age will turn up tons of great ideas and really expand your conception of what kids at that age are capable of!

I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly exposed to Christianity and its cultural heritage, read the same books and watch many of the same shows as Europe, the US, and Canada, I use sit-down toilet, not squat toilets, and I eat mostly with forks and knives, not with chopsticks or with my fingers.

While it is true that the culture of the Mayans in my country is slightly foreign to me (as it is to most Mexicans, since most of us are not Mayan, and the Mayans have always had separatist tendencies to begin with), I still feel like the Mayans and I are by now part of the greater western world than any other part of the world. We shouldn't be so foreignised.

My resentment, of course, comes because "Western" is being used here in the sense of money-having, with a certain air of superiority, however well-intentioned or benign this air may be. True that culture and wealth go hand-in-hand, but I think we're all more alike than different. I didn't like doing chores as a kid and I don't know a lot of Mexicans who did. We're more alike to those who self-apply and exclude us from the "Western" label than we are different.

Everything listed there you would have found during the frontier days of America (and still do in some parts), so does that make America not western? I don't know it's very confusing. My parents are from Greece from large families and had this exact same experience growing up -- you had to do your part -- and Greece is known as the the birthplace of western civilization.

Again, confusing to me. Western is just some huge bucket now that doesn't really have meaning.

On another level, I can kind of relate to you not knowing what type of "western" you are. On a whole, (this might sound confusing) it's the Roman West that is overrepresented in "Western Civilization", but you also had the "East" western civilization as well, and very much has some things in common with what some people know was "East" (as in Asian), but still distinctly "Western"

But I am with you, I don't know either sometimes.