Do Self-Reported Years of Formal Education Reflect a Trade-off with Embodied Medicinal Plant Knowledge?

Abstract Under life history theory, energy invested in formal education cannot be simultaneously allocated to subsistence activities. Schooling may therefore reduce opportunities to acquire embodied medicinal plant knowledge. We hypothesized that formal education reduces medicinal plant knowledge (H1) and that gender roles, modulated by schooling, differentially affect this knowledge in women and men (H2). We studied the Franco rural community in Cocal, Piauí, Brazil. Data came from free listing, semi-structured interviews, direct observation, and a photographic checklist, and hypotheses were tested with generalized linear models. Schooling was measured as self-reported years of formal education, a proxy that captures neither attendance nor daily time allocation. No trade-off was observed between years of formal education and medicinal plant knowledge at the population level. The association differed by gender for therapeutic targets and for the combined plant–target measure, though not for plant richness. School attendance does not preclude participation in activities that promote the acquisition of medicinal plant knowledge. Gendered occupational differences may explain why some dimensions of men’s knowledge decline with schooling while women’s do not. Human life history, subsistence participation, cooperative child-rearing, extended families, and interactions during play may explain the unsupported population-level trade-off.