Drawing on fieldwork carried out with children and their families in a farming village in north-eastern Ghana, this article explores indigenous attitudes to learning and their impact on boys’ and girls’ engagement in schooling. It does so by first illustrating how, in contrast to normative ideas regarding children’s time best being occupied in play and schooling, local interpretations of childhood see work as an age-appropriate behaviour for children, while schooling is not viewed as a normal part of childhood. The article, goes on to explore how attitudes to schooling are changing as a result of transformations in the lived experiences of individuals in the village and in doing so illustrates the central argument of the article ; namely that one cannot understand the participation, or not, of children in formal education and transformations in these, without proper weight and attention being given to the set of ideas and practices that constitute childhood in specific contexts.