Understanding Humans as it relates to
Educational Philosophy and other Views about Education
What is Human? How do we learn? How do we know?
Focus questions & responses
What makes us human?
Human life is different than animals - see also human animal comparison
- Walk upright
- Run for long distances
- Opposable thumbs
- Persistent curiosity, habits of mind
- Collaborate with family, friends, & strangers, across gender, animals, and other tribes or groups.
- Create see a point in the end of a stick, a scraper in a rock, and combine two objects to make one tool ...
- Process food: butcher animals, fillet fish, dry food, cook, smoke, salt, preserve
- Develop tools, technology, domestication of plants and animals
- Foresight - anticipate and see the future
- Fear the future
- Complex brain
- Logic
- Language and communicate across time and long distances, gossip, tell stories, art, music ...
- Social
- Read people's body expressions to anticipate their thinking one, two, three, four, or more steps into the future.
- Able to speculate on what other people are thinking and to speculate that they are capable of thinking about what I am thinking that they are thinking ... and so forth...
- Hate for our enemies
- Create ideas that are not real or have physical properties: art, music, fiction, speculation, lies, stories, myths, explanations, theories, ...
- Consciousness aware that we are curious, social, and have awareness of our selves and individuals.
- Have the capacity to intervene for ourselves and to change the world.
- One form of intervention is learning and teaching.
Why do we teach and learn?
What is Human? How do we learn? How do we know?
Human life is different than animals - see also human animal comparison
Curiosity is the motivation to learn. It stimulates thoughts and questions. It motivates us to wonder, search, discover, analyze, and reflect on ideas and decisions. All which are fundamental results of curiosity so we learn for or to...
- Survive or our survival as a species
- Curiosity that initiates searching for explanations
- Solve problems
- Care about and for others
- Enjoyment pleasure (enjoyment, food, curious, self-development, love to hate enemies, reduce pain…)
- Freedom
- Better lives
- Better way of doing things
- We learn to become more complete.
- Our incompleteness makes it possible to learn
- We search and in the search we intervene which is to teach ourselves
- Searching is never done, which makes us incomplete
- Searching creates the possibility for the creation of knowledge
How do I know what I know?
Critical thinking and logical reasoning based on observational evidence determines our quality of learning and depends on our creative depth of thought.
- Human brain, all human brains are alike in more ways than they are different.
Human brains have evolved predisposed to eat, move, learn language, and learn new ways to process the many simultaneous inputs the brain receives. A genetically encoded brain begins to adapt to the multiple inputs it receives as nerve impulses, neurochemicals, hormones, and other chemicals from the communicative pathways to which it is connected. As people interact with the environment they react to and interpret their experiences in novel ways that allow them to adapt and survive or satiate their curiosity. Memory of these experiences and adaptations resulting in assimilation and accommodation is learning and collectively is our personal knowledge. - We learn and eventually our knowledge results not just from pure experience, but with a good education, it becomes knowing how to use rigorous logical methods and procedures for productive learning in creative, ingenious, ethical ways to think critcally with deep understanding and epistemological curiosity for our survival and enjoyment.
- We are motivated with our ingenious curiosity to move beyond a simple folk representation of common sense, conventional wisdom, and rote learning.
What limits our search for knowledge?
Our search for knowledge is restricted by
- Ourselves: genetics, habits of mind, ...
- Those we know - our culture, politics ...
- Authority and freedom
- Freedom can range from doing whatever a person wants at the expense of others which is anarchy. Or Freedom can be restrained by the ethics we choose, but we always have the freedom to transgress.
- Environment …
- Resources …
- Ethics with democracy as the social glue
How do ethics fit with democracy?
Democracy requires a large majority of ethical citizens who will take a strong proactive stance to desire, support, and act to protect freedom for everyone, especially those who are different and have minority views different than ours. Citizens who will defend and provide real meaningful inclusion for all citizens with an equitable distribution of wealth and when necessary sacrifice. Where people can make ethical choices with out fear of bias, stereotype, or hate to freely express themselves without censorship and persue a happy, healthy, and meaningful life.
“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves — in their separate, and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.” July 1, 1854
What do we need to know from educational theory?
Education is ideological (The insidious nature of ideology is its ability to make itself invisible.)
To educate we must know:
- Education requires a recognition that our beliefs and ideas are a product of our condition and conditioning.
- Objectivity always contains within it a dimension of subjectivity.
- All ideas and opinions should continuously be considered as subjective: open to investigate the origins, history, and consequences associated with them.
- Without the qualities or virtues such as: a generous loving heart, respect for others, tolerance, humility, a joyful disposition, love of life, openness to what is new, a disposition to welcome change, perseverance in a struggle, a refusal of determinism, a spirit of hope, and an openness to justice a pedagogical practice that provides autonomy for students is not possible.
- Autonomy is not provided in one size fits all standardized instruction.
- Learners must out maneuver the banking system of education (banking information for later use). We must know how to teach (instructional and learning theory)so each learner will approach the learning process in a manner that will make their objects of learning (learning content) knowable.
- How to understand our students well enought (human developmental theories) to help them recognize they are the architects of their own cognition process and provide them the freedom and autonomy to maintain their love of learning while we teach and they learn how to learn, find their talents and develop them to become highly able and successful learners who desire and are capable of taking charge of their education throughout their lives.
What are my beliefs about teaching?
- There is no teaching without learning. When we teach we search to understand what the learner knows and with that search we intervene which is to teach ourselves.
- It is impossible to live this openness in the world without inner security, just as it is impossible to have that security without taking the risk of being open.
- Authority comes from a self confident teacher interacting with students who are curious and openly question what they know and what they don’t know to increase their autonomy in the process of becoming whatever they will become.
- Neutrality of education is impossible - Can’t be neutral. Study for the sake of study is impossible. For what would you study? For whom? And why?
- Educability is being unfinished and is ethical because we must make decisions and we can transgress in the decisions we make.
- If the teacher takes only one view, then the teacher can only realize the teacher’s goals or views. And there will be no student autonomy.
- There is no such thing as teaching without research (systematic investigation to verify information and new conclusions) and research without teaching. Research and investigation unites theory and practice to result in principled procedures for teaching.
- I teach because I am curious and search for understanding. In doing so I notice things and intervene.
- I am secure enough to share my curiosity and questions. I am demanding enough to require sufficient research and reflection to draw conclusions. And through these actions and interactions I educate and educate myself. I do research so as to know what I do not yet know and to communicate and proclaim what I discover.
- Respect of autonomy and know learning requires this kind of practice