Kline has done a fine job in laying out the various disciplinary perspectives on teaching, but she fails to acknowledge that all three perspectives are mediated by culture. I find two aspects of her argument particularly problematic. First, her definition of teaching is broadened (contrast Thornton & Raihani Reference Thornton and Raihani2008, p. 1823) to include an enormous range of behavior. In fact, the definition is so broad that it is hardly distinguishable from social learning: for example, “Social learning … refers to any situation in which the behavior, or presence, or the products of the behavior, of one individual influence the learning of another” (Caldwell & Whiten Reference Caldwell and Whiten2002, p. 193).

Specifically, Kline's catholic definition of teaching includes teaching by social tolerance, illustrated by a Fijian woman who permits her child to get involved as she prepares food (see target article, sect. 3.1.1). This is precisely the pattern of behavior that Rogoff and colleagues have been documenting for decades in rural Mexican and Guatemalan villages, and their primary conclusion is that children learn through their own initiative, observing, participating, practicing, and doing, not from being taught (Paradise & Rogoff Reference Paradise and Rogoff2009, p. 117; Rogoff et al. Reference Rogoff, Paradise, Arauz, ávez and Angelillo2003). Perhaps the Fijian mother is simply acceding to the child's inexorable drive to learn, perhaps she's just being accommodating to head off a tantrum?

Another “type” of teaching is opportunity provisioning (see target article, sects. 3.1.2 and 4.2.2). This would include the frequent accounts of the provision of knives to young children. For example, a Pirahã child:

Again, I would use this case as prima facie evidence of parents' aversion to teaching coupled with the bedrock belief – solicited in interviews – (Lancy, in press) that learning is children's business (e.g., Willerslev Reference Willerslev2007, p. 162).

Evaluative feedback is another type of teaching discussed by Kline (sects. 3.1.4 and 4.2.4). A normative reading of the ethnographic record would stress the rarity of feedback – especially praise – from adults (Hilger Reference Hilger1957, p. 77). On the other hand, corporal punishment (Ember & Ember Reference Ember and Ember2005) and affrightment are certainly common enough but it isn't clear that the intent is to teach. A Samoan mother may threaten a fretful baby by calling out “Pig! Elenoa is here, come and eat her!” (Ochs Reference Ochs1988, p. 183). “Evaluative feedback” is largely used to manage the child's behavior, rather than to transmit the culture.

My larger point is that, unlike direct active teaching, Kline's other types of teaching are more securely and parsimoniously labeled “social learning.”

The second issue is that Kline fails to account for acculturation. She finds that teaching is “common” on Fiji (sect. 4.1, para. 1), but the villagers she queried had had over 100 years' exposure to Western schooling and missionary influence (Kline et al. Reference Kline, Boyd and Henrich2013, p. 357). In my fieldwork with Kpelle children in the early 1970s where teaching was conspicuously absent, the village inaugurated its first school during my fieldwork. The Christian congregation was tiny and Muslims even rarer (Lancy Reference Lancy1996). Little conducted a child-focused ethnography among the Asabano, a remote and unacculturated Papua New Guinea (PNG) Highlands tribe. Schools and churches had arrived within the previous 15–20 years. In his observation of children and parents, he saw no teaching. Parents displayed no obligation to encourage children's learning; to manage their activity; or even to acknowledge, let alone reward, children's efforts. However, when “asked how their children learn anything, [parents] unanimously answered that they explicitly ‘show’ children in a step-by-step process. Even though they very clearly did no such thing.” Probing further, Little discovered that the resolution to this contradiction lay in the consistent and explicit sermonizing of village pastors regarding the Christian duty of parents to instruct their children. Although parents had not actually changed their parenting behavior, they could parrot the credo and apply it to their own culture (Little Reference Little2011, pp. 152–53).

In comparative studies which have focused on this cultural divide, mothers and children with more schooling readily adopt the roles of teacher and student in experimental learning contexts, whereas those with little or no schooling act as if the child will learn autonomously through exploration, observation, and imitation/practice (e.g., Chavajay Reference Chavajay2006; Correa-Chavez & Rogoff Reference Correa-Chavez and Rogoff2005; Göncü et al. Reference Göncü, Mistry and Mosier2000; Paradise & de Haan Reference Paradise and de Haan2009). Other relevant findings come from Tahiti and Nepal, where acculturated parents adopt “modern” child-rearing practices that emphasize school readiness and developmental milestones as compared to the laissez-faire practices of their “old-fashioned” village counterparts (Levy Reference Levy, Harkness and Super1996, pp. 129–30; see also Crago Reference Crago1992, p. 498; Seymour Reference Seymour2001, p. 16). Indeed, in a recent report of a multi-site, multi-nation study, “women internalize the teacher role from their experience in Western-type schools and use it as mothers” (LeVine et al. Reference LeVine, LeVine, Schnell-Anzola, Rowe and Dexter2012, p. 139).

Direct active teaching (sects. 3.1.5 and 4.3.1), while rare elsewhere (Lancy Reference Lancy2010), enjoys almost mythic status in what Henrich et al. (Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010) refer to as WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized rich, democratic) society, and is a major export – as the LeVine et al survey reveals. So important is teaching in WEIRD society, parents do it even when there is no need, such as teaching kids how to talk or how to play (Lancy Reference Lancy2014). Ironically, even in WEIRD society, parents and professionally trained teachers are not necessarily very good at it. In a study of WEIRD parents teaching their children the game Chutes and Ladders, some parents used effective techniques, others were quite ineffective (Bjorklund Reference Bjorklund2007, p. 158; see also Bergin et al. Reference Bergin, Lancy, Draper and Lancy1994). In a recent massive study in the United States, the level of parents' academic involvement did not predict children's grades. In fact, “helping with homework” had a negative impact because parents so often botched the job (Robinson & Harris Reference Robinson and Harris2014).

From the culture-based approach to the study of teaching, the evidence clearly shows that teaching itself must be culturally transmitted – teaching is largely a product of nurture, not nature.