Maslow is a humanistic psychologist. Humanists don’t believe that humans are pushed and pulled by mechanical forces, either of stimuli and reinforcements (behaviorism) or of unconscious instinctual urges (psychoanalysis). Humanists center on potentials. They believe that humans reach for a high-level of capabilities. Humans look for the frontiers of creativity, the highest reaches of consciousness and wiseness. This has been labeled “fully functioning person”, “healthy personality”, or as Maslow calls this level, “self-actualizing person.”
Abraham Maslow formulated a theory of personality that’s molded a number of different fields, including education. This wide influence is due in part to the upper-level of practicality of Maslow’s theory. This theory precisely describes a lot of realities of personal experiences. Many individuals find they can comprehend what Maslow says. They can realize some features of their experience or behavior which is true and identifiable but which they’ve never put into words.
Maslow has set up a hierarchic hypothesis of requirements. All of his primary needs are instinctive, equivalent of instincts in other creatures. Humans begin with a very weak temperament that’s then fashioned fully as the individual develops. If the environment is correct, individuals will grow straight and beautiful, realizing the potentials they’ve inherited. If the environment isn’t “correct” (and mostly it isn’t) they’ll not grow tall and straight and beautiful.
It is a hierarchy of 5 levels of primary needs. Beyond these requirements, greater levels of needs exist. These include needs for understanding, esthetic appreciation and strictly spiritual needs. In the levels of the 5 primary requirements, the individual doesn’t feel the 2nd need till the demands of the 1st have been fulfilled, nor the 3rd till the 2nd has been fulfilled, and so forth. Maslow’s primary requirements are as follows:
These are biological requirements. They comprise needs for oxygen, nutrients, water, and a comparatively constant body heat. They’re the most potent needs as if a individual were bereft of all needs, the physiologic ones would come first in the person’s search for gratification.
When all physiologic needs are fulfilled and are no more controlling views and behaviors, the demands for security may become active. Adults have little cognizance of their security needs except in times of emergency or points of disarrangement in the social structure (like widespread rioting). Youngsters frequently display the signs of insecurity and the demand to be safe.
Requirements of love, tenderness and belonging:
When the needs for safety and for physiologic welfare are fulfilled, the following class of needs for love, tenderness and belonging may come out. Maslow says that individuals look to overcome feelings of aloneness and estrangement. This involves both giving and welcoming love, affection and the sense of belonging.
Needs for regard:
When the 1st three classes of requirements are fulfilled, the needs for regard may become dominant. These affect needs for both self-regard and for the admiration a person gets from other people. Mankind has a need for a stable, firmly based, upper-level of self-regard, and respect from other people. When these needs are gratified, the individual feels self-assured and valuable as a person in the cosmos. When these needs are disappointed, the individual feels substandard, powerless, helpless and un-needed.
Requirements for self-actualization:
When all of the foregoing demands are gratified, then and only then are the needs for self-actualization triggered. Maslow identifies self actualization as a person’s motivation to be and do that which the person was “born to do.” “A musician must do music, an artist must paint, and a poet must author.” These needs make themselves felt in signs of impatience. The individual feels on edge, strained, lacking something, in short, uneasy. If a individual is hungry, insecure, not loved or accepted, or lacking self-regard, it’s very easy to know that the person is uneasy. It isn’t always clear what a individual wants when there’s a need for self-actualization.
The hierarchic hypothesis is frequently interpreted as a pyramid, with the bigger, lower levels making up the lower needs, and the upper point mapping the need for self-actualization. Maslow thinks that the only reason that individuals wouldn’t move well in direction of selfactualization is because of handicaps placed in their way by society. He says that education is among these handicaps. He advocates ways education may switch from its common person-stunting tactics to person-growing approaches. Maslow says that educators should react to the potential an person has for growing into a self-actualizing individual of his/her own kind.
10 points that educators should address are named:
- We should instruct individuals to be authentic, to be cognizant of their inner selves and to hear their inner-feeling voices.
- We should instruct individuals to exceed their cultural conditioning and become world citizens.
- We should assist individuals in discovering their calling in life, their calling, fate or fate. This is particularly centered on discovering the correct career and the correct mate.
- We should instruct individuals that life is cherished, that there’s joy to be received in life, and if individuals are open to seeing the good and joy in all kinds of places, it makes life worth living.
- We must take the person as he or she is and help the individual learn their intimate nature. From true knowledge of aptitudes and limitations we may know what to build on, what potentials are truly there.
- We must see that the individual basic needs are fulfilled. This includes safety, belongingness, and regard needs.
- We should freshen up consciousness, instructing the individual to value beauty and the other good things in nature and in living.
- We should instruct individuals that controls are good, and utter abandon is unfit. It takes control to better the quality of life in all areas.
- We should instruct individuals to transcend the negligible troubles and cope with the serious problems in life. These include the troubles of unfairness, of pain, suffering, and dying.
- We must instruct individuals to be good selectors. They must be given practice in making beneficial choices.