"Reveal yourself so that from you I can be and do the different…" Humberto Maturana.
Introduction
In this document, some reflections on the way in which the learning process has been explained, and the impact on man, are exposed, focusing on the humanistic conception of learning and how to recreate education to meet current needs. The intention of this proposal is to show the capacity that we as humans have to regenerate and rebuild ourselves in this fight for a liberating, conscious and sensitive education.
First, the current crisis in education will be addressed, according to the actions of man, the globalized content and the failure to give fullness to individuals. In the background, the contributions of various theories of intellectual development that have been concerned with the human being as a unique being and their summation to respond to the vision of integral development will be analyzed. Subsequently, a proposal is presented that addresses current problems and rescue the need to develop human beings, not just men. Finally, general conclusions about the proposal are listed.
The current situation of the educational crisis
The human being is so complex that the need to understand himself, to understand his relationship with the world around him and the interactions he establishes with the beings that make up that world are born from himself. In this search for knowledge and in the subsequent construction of knowledge, he proposes various ways of conceiving his own learning; Let us look at the example of primitive man who, with a semi-developed language, tries to generalize the perception of what lightning is, the existence of the sun, among other phenomena that give rise to the diversity of cultures and religions that exist today, and those who have perished in that generalizing attempt.
The variety of perceptions about the construction of knowledge, the life sciences being the result of said construction, have had less or greater acceptance according to the socio-temporal needs of the human being. Out of fear of error and towards leaving gaps of uncertainty, man long sought precision and objectivity in knowledge, thus projecting to the exact sciences and their characteristic rigor. But is not the human being an imprecise, diverse and unique being?
In this doubt about the relativity of the human being and his relationships, the way in which the world is perceived and how it is learned is impacted, being this last point of interest to man about his own development. Education as a process from human to human, lost that essence of a two-way relationship, with the acceptance that all human contributions are objects of knowledge, and persisted in turning the world into a mechanical system that could be universally understood.
It is enough to reflect on the relevance that is given to the global contents existing in the official curricula of the nations and the way in which it has been evaluated to homogenize the achievements of the subjects, as if they were automated beings and produced to perform accessible tasks. for all".
Education, in its task of making men develop to achieve a quality of life, has adopted aspects of thought that have greater acceptance and have adapted them to try to understand what is necessary for a man to find stability, from one point from a materialistic point of view. Thus causing personal relationships, content and the process as such, to a greater extent focus on job competition and economic achievement.
Although it is true that the human and the material are not foreign meanings, a struggle has been achieved between the superiority of one over the other, causing current conflicts such as global warming, terrorism, consumerism, water scarcity, infertility of the earth, etc.
We have lost ourselves in the search for comfort and control over our environment, the human sense, its essence has been lost and the notion of spirituality has been completely forgotten, which is attached to man from the moment he tries to understand why they happen things. Man himself has been fragmented and the link between him and nature, an essential element in the existence of human beings. A standardized and unique vision of reality has been imposed on him, he is not allowed to think, everything he learns has already been understood by someone else and therefore, being accepted by democratization, cannot be questioned.
I could affirm that we are in danger of falling into the decline of thought, since everything has already been said and nothing can be questioned, we have been programmed that idea and we are not disturbed, in the comfort that was achieved we let others think for us.. Although there are small foci that want us to fall into crisis so that we turn our gaze to new responses.
As Gallegos Nava mentions:
“The rationality of the turn of the century man is being transformed. This change transits from the traditional vision based on the separateness of things, which considers that the universe is built of an infinite number of separate entities, things and events, that each one has an existence and identity and that the relationship between things it is accidental, even the new vision based on the assumption of totality ”
(Gallegos Nava, 1998)
In this renewed perception of thought, it is necessary to understand the influence of the conception of intelligence, as an innate capacity to access knowledge from the point of view of cognition and affectivity, in an integrative and totalitarian way; in the same way it is necessary to recapitulate the contributions of other explanations about human thought.
From fragmented diversity to the integration of perceptions
When we stop to look for explanations on the pertinent way of understanding the world around us, answers arise that generate new questions. A principle that should govern those involved in the educational process to support these explanations, should be to perceive the human being as a unique and totalitarian being, not a mechanized entity. In this prosecution, it is necessary to review the different contributions that have emerged based on the aforementioned principle.
The first explanation provided by Jean Piaget, starts from the biological point of view of the human being, pointing out that in the development of man there are stages in which certain tasks can be carried out because there is cognitive maturation, but leaving the gap to the importance of means for man to reach these stages of development and giving rise to questions: Does the medium motivate or condition?
And it is the space that allows Vigostky to intervene, with his Sociocultural theory, by telling us that the medium does not condition but contributes and makes democratically accepted knowledge available to us, showing the importance of interactions between subjects to build a collective vision; which also makes us reflect on the limitation of reality and the homogenization of it.
In this uncertainty, Ausubel appears, telling us that although this reality is constructed by the collective, the individual will assign a particular meaning to that knowledge and will give it an individual meaning according to their cognitive needs, adding the fact that there is a provision to learn, questioning Where does that disposition to learn arise?
If we had to respond to it, it would be necessary to explain that all disposition comes from the individuality of the being, that which moves it, an object that is not generated from the outside, since if it were, it would become a conditioning. Giving us the entry pass towards Rogers' humanistic understanding, which explains the importance of affectivity and individuality, since it governs man's regulation of what he learns and focuses on the possibility that each subject has a vision of reality different and unique for being a different and unique being.
This last theory is directed more to the principle of the education of the human for the human, since it recognizes it from its affective dimension, recognizing it in a more comprehensive way and not only from cognition. In it the different developed theories can be integrated, since they make man an integrated vision of his being. Although it also points out to us that educators are not trained in this sphere, therefore they have their hands tied to recognize the apprentice as a unique being, showing in turn the opportunity to renew ourselves and re-emerge from our mechanistic, systemic and materialistic crisis.
Resurgence: challenge or need
From the brief analysis on the theories of intellectual development of a psychopedagogical nature, it is necessary to complement them with the totalitarian perception of the universe that the new life sciences entail, as Gallegos mentions. That vision that challenges us to understand that we are human beings linked to a perception of reality and whose internal processes are valid in individuality.
Education has to adopt a totalitarian opening to modify the structures that have been inherited, emerge from the mistakes it has made as a new way of learning. Facing the challenges that the high rates of violence and existing dehumanization practices show us, since they become a priority when we see that we are losing ourselves in our struggle not to impose the superiority of reasoning over the inert, but rather superiority based on strength and reasoning.
Educating must take on a new meaning, direct itself to a new way of existing, being, thinking, acting and feeling, according to a current situation, as Francisco Gutiérrez mentions: current problems cannot be solved with yesterday's solutions (Gutierrez). In this current society, we cannot transcend the integrating perspective of man-nature, but rather we start from building the body-mind-soul vision.
For a long time we have focused on the first two parts of that meeting of essential elements for a true and real inclusive development, in said development it is a priority to focus at first on raising awareness and recognition of our own nature. Know and feel human, in the biological, emotional, cognitive and spiritual dimensions.
For this, it is necessary to reformulate the purpose of education, the role of the teacher and that of the apprentice, as well as how to access knowledge and what we should learn.
In this way, the regulatory systems that are carried out in the school would become obsolete. For example, the use of uniforms, the fragmentation by degrees and division of knowledge, the physical structure of the classrooms and the resources used in the process. Allowing events such as affective education to take place from the earliest years and to be an aspect of permanent and transversal development, the interaction between the medium and the school opened the doors and knocked down the traditional walls of the buildings; the materials were manipulable, fostered experimentation and experiential, as well as the issues to be addressed, arising from current conflicts to generate participatory, reflective and responsible citizenship. In addition to changing the evaluative aspect, not assess according to parameters but to achievements,that they go beyond what is reflected in an instrument, in a specific space and moment, because this would make it necessary to assess what the learner has generated from home and other spheres.
Suggesting the above, the autopoietic vision of Maturana is presented, which gives us the perspective of creating himself and his reality: "Autopoiesis means the creation of oneself" (Capra, 2002). In this vision, man will not be universalized, he will be exclusive and unique, a totally human being who, when self-regulating, builds a unique and potentially modifiable reality, in the same way produces solutions to problems by questioning his stability and dynamism of that reality, to the Once it takes into account its totality and integration, we will be facing a resurgence of education, contracting a new purpose: to signify the human to learn to develop ourselves.
Conclusions
From the above, I conclude:
- The current education is undoubtedly in a crisis, however, the term should not have negative connotations, since from this crisis we will start with the renewal, we will not try to emerge from chaos but from the transformation of what already exists, since this at Being created by man is valid for his resurgence. This resurgence should not take place spontaneously and radically, since this would create rejection for breaking what for a long time cost to build, requires gradualness and awareness, processes that could last considerable periods of time. The transition from traditional information society education to autopoietic-human education is not an emerging need,It has become a challenge by showing us that the current problems are absorbing us and we are already in the fight for a revaluation of the human as a solution to the phenomenon of dehumanization that we experience. We will continue to focus on the apprentice for a long time, since this is the cause and as a consequence of the educational process, as long as there is life, the school will continue to exist, although conceived from a more integrative and not rigid perspective. the modification of the classroom relationship: not only the apprentice is human, the teacher must potentiate his human sense and defend it before those who want to attack him.The development of the soul recovers a value by suggesting self-realization as man's purpose in educating himself. A guide to spirituality alien to any religion, but to the belief of man's own faculties about satisfying his biological, psychological and emotional expectations and needs.
The challenge has started, many are starting the small modifications in their classrooms, but they are not aware of these transformations. As teachers, apprentices, authorities and society in general, we cannot continue in our conformity zone believing that things are "not so bad"; it is necessary to rethink and rebuild ourselves, to believe in our potential beyond the material resources we have. We are in the era of RE: we recreate and renew ourselves, we miss the essence and the thirst to know (dormant for so long) exists in our own nature, we just have to make it rise again.
Bibliography
- Capra, F. (2002). The plot of life. A new perspective of living systems. Barcelona: Angrama.Gallegos Nava, R. (1998). THE Holistic Vision of science and life. Mexico: Pax.Gutierrez, F. Education and training of adults.
