Human Awareness: Understanding the Biological basis of Knowledge and Love in Education

Attachment

human-awareness---education-and-biology.pdf

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Description

We consider that the central task of education is to attend to, foster, and guide children in their growth as self respecting, socially and ecologically conscious and responsible human beings.

In the origin of humanity, and in early cultures, there was no education as a special activity in the life of growing children of the community. The children learned all the practices and relational dimensions of their living as members of the human community to which they belonged, by living all its dimensions in their daily living. This does not happen anymore now.

In our present culture, children live mostly separated from the community in which they are supposed to belong, spending most of their time in a school, in a nursery, or in a special place for little children. And they do so precisely in the period of their lives in which they should be growing as socially conscious and ecologically aware, well integrated human beings by participating in the life of the community. This state of affairs is usually justified in our times with theories of cognition that associate knowledge with information, and that see the task of education as an acquisition of knowledge.

The intelligent living is expanded in a co-existence in mutual respect (biology of love), and is restricted and diminished in a co-existence in fear, ambition and competitiveness. If we are not conscious of this, we are blind with respect to what happens with our students and we continuously deny them creating conditions in which reduce and restrict their intelligent behavior.

Author

Humberto Maturana and Sima Nisis de Rezepka. University of Chile, Santiago, Chile.