Humanism as the Predominant Philosophy in Adult Education - Essay Example

Humanism as the Predominant Philosophy in Adult Education Education has been viewed as providing a significant contribution to a person’s success. A person goes through more than a decade of education in his youth. It is at this time when learning is believed to take place the fastest. Everybody is born with a capacity to learn. In the book The Adult Learner by Malcolm S. Knowles, Elwood F. Holton III and Richard A. Swanson, the term learning is defined in a myriad of ways. The one by Boyd and Apps goes: “Learning is the act or process by which behavioral change, knowledge, skills and attitudes are acquired” (Boyd, Apps, et al., (1980, pp.100-101). In this definition, even animals have the capacity to learn, as acquisition of behavior has been known to be trained in animals. The book defines education as “an activity undertaken or initiated by one or more agents that is designed to effect changes in the knowledge, skill, and attitudes of individuals, groups, or communities. The term emphasizes the educator, the agent of change who presents stimuli and reinforcement for learning and designs activities to induce change.” (Knowles, Holton & Swanson, 2005). This definition gives a more communal flavor to the definition of learning, as it indicates that the learner adapts to the knowledge, skill and attitudes of the group he belongs to. Change is evident in learning. The agent of change is the educator or teacher, who is responsible in stimulating learning to effect that change in his learner. The more person-centered thinkers like Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and Malcolm Knowles share a humanistic view of education, and are specifically concerned with adults who are taking their second chance at it. Malcolm Knowles, known as the Father of Andragogy or adult education has formulated his own Andragogical Theory of Adult Learning as the art and science of helping adults learn. It is organized around the notion that adults learn best in informal, comfortable, flexible and nonthreatening settings. Andragogy is also differentiated from Pedagogy, which is childhood education, the kind most people grew up with. In the humanistic view, adult learners are assumed to be motivated to learn as they are more conscious of its benefits. They experience needs and interests that learning satisfies. Their orientation to learning is practical and centered on their own lives. Adults value experience as the richest resource of learning, that is why they have no hesitations learning something while they are engaged in a new experience. “Nearly all adult education voluntary. Educational activities must meet the needs of as adult learners in order to survive”( Ellias & Merriman, 1980, p135). Adult learners have a deep need to direct their own learning, possessing a pride and learning style that suits their own personalities. As people mature, individual differences increase with age. Accepting these assumptions of how adults learn, Carl Rogers (1969), a humanistic psychologist further details the process of humanistic learning. He claims that the learner is personally involved in a holistic way. His or her feelings and cognitive aspects are deep into the learning experience. Even when the learning stimulus comes from an external source, the sense of discovery, of reaching out, of grasping and comprehending comes from within. Rogers also emphasizes that learning makes a difference in the behavior, attitudes, even the personality of the learner. This is consistent with the definition of learning presented earlier. The learner is aware whether his learning meets his personal need, whether it leads toward what he wants to know and whether “it illuminates the dark area of ignorance the individual is experiencing. The locus of evaluation resides definitely in the learner.” The essence of learning for the adult learner is meaning. When learning takes place, the element of meaning is built into the whole experience. Ellias and Merriman (1980) concur, “the truly humanistic teacher respects and utilizes the experiences and potentialities of students”(125). He gets his cues from his students in order for his class to be more productive. Abraham Maslow, influential in his theory of man’s Hierarchy of needs illustrates that a person goes through a ladder of needs for survival. His needs for safety is basic, as it encompasses biological and psychological needs of security –his hunger is satiated, he is clothed and sheltered and he does not feel threats to harm his cocoon of security. When these basic needs are met, then he goes up to the need for affection as he seeks warm and satisfying personal relationships to make him feel loved and to love others in return. Upon satisfying that need, he feels a need to build up his esteem, as how he feels about himself and how others think of him becomes essential to his survival. Finally, he reaches self-actualization which is the “full use of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc.” At this point, ambivalence is felt by the individual as two opposing sets of forces within him determine his growth toward his goal: one set clings to safety and defensiveness out of fear, tending to regress backward, hanging on to the past in his comfort zone. The other set of forces “impels him forward toward wholeness to Self and uniqueness of self toward full functioning of all his capacities. We grow forward when the delights of growth and anxieties of safety are greater than the anxieties of growth and the delights of safety” (Maslow, 1972, pp.44-45). The educator is not spared from such a process. “Ideally, the humanistic teacher is self-actualized or fully functional individual. That this applies to an adult educational setting as well as any other is obvious. An adult instructor dealing with adult students can hardly ignore the wealth and variety of individual experiences as a foundation for facilitating learning” (Ellias & Merriman, 1980, p125). Focusing on the person and how he perceives the learning experience is the heart of the humanistic view of adult education. More than the concepts or skills he acquires through the activities designed around how he learns, “the emphasis of the humanistic educator, however, is not upon the works of the past and the values these possess, but on the freedom and dignity of the individual person that is highlighted in this tradition” (Ellias & Merriman, 1980, p109). Being psychologically healthy is a prerequisite for it. Carl Rogers states, the learners’ most important work focuses on demonstrating the optimum psychological conditions which allows for open communication and the empowerment of individuals to achieve their fullest potential” This implies that adults who are on their way to self-actualization are the best candidates for optimum adult learning. Carl Rogers “his Diff. learning for children vs. adult – pedagogy vs. adragogy Intro Humanism: Carl Rogers Maslow Discuss quotes from Ellias & Merriam Read More