Abraham Maslow





Introduction
Informal and formal education empower and enable learners. Think about the U.S. Declaration of Independence and its statement:


 * We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This is a very general statement. We empower people by providing and guaranteeing these rights, and we enable people by helping them to have the education and other resources to make use of these unalienable rights. Abraham Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who thought very carefully about some of the same ideas, but from an apolitical point of view. He represented his insights as a Hierarcy of Needs.

Maslow's Hierarchy
Quoting from the Wikipedia:


 * Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a theory in psychology that Abraham Maslow proposed in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation, which he subsequently extended to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. The concept for Maslow's hierarchy of needs work was based on Kurt Goldstein's organismic theory of personality ("The Organism,"1938).


 * Maslow's theory contended that as humans meet 'basic needs', they seek to satisfy successively 'higher needs' that occupy a set hierarchy. Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy."[1] Maslow also studied one percent of the healthiest college student population. While Maslow's theory was regarded as an improvement over previous theories of personality and motivation, it had its detractors. For example, in their extensive review of research that is dependent on Maslow's theory, Wahba and Bridwell (1976) found little evidence for the ranking of needs that Maslow described, or even for the existence of a definite hierarchy at all. Chilean economist and philosopher Manfred Max Neef has also argued that fundamental human needs are non-hierarchical, and are ontologically universal and invariant in nature - part of the condition of being human. Poverty he argues is the result of any one of these needs being frustrated, denied or unfulfilled.

The last sentence given above is a very important idea. There are many different definitions of poverty. A government, for example, may define poverty as income below a certain specified level. An educator interested in computer technology might bring up the idea of digital divide, pointing out that lack of adequate access to computer facilities is a type of poverty. Still others might point to a lack of free access to a good quality education as a type of poverty.

Maslow's Hierarchy is typically represented in the form of a pyramid. The diagram given below is copied from the Wikipedia.



Poverty, Needs, and Education
The Information Age Education Wiki focuses on improving the quality of education available to and being obtained by students throughout the world. One way to think about the quality of an education system is the extent to which it helps people meet the hierarchy of needs suggested by Maslow or by other organizations and people. This analysis needs to be done both independent of any particular cultural, society, type of government, and so on, but also in the context of what is possible at current levels of worldwide accumulated knowledgeable, skills, technology, medicine,levels of productivity, and so on.

The steadily growing accumulation of information contributed to a steadily growing value for people to learn to make use of this information. The 1959 United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child states in Principle 7:


 * The child is entitled to receive education, which shall be free and compulsory, at least in the elementary stages. He shall be given an education which will promote his general culture and enable him, on a basis of equal opportunity, to develop his abilities, his individual judgment, and his sense of moral and social responsibility, and to become a useful member of society.


 * The best interests of the child shall be the guiding principle of those responsible for his education and guidance; that responsibility lies in the first place with his parents.


 * The child shall have full opportunity for play and recreation, which should be directed to the same purposes as education; society and the public authorities shall endeavor to promote the enjoyment of this right.

This is a powerful statement. Notice, however, that it does not speak to any particular quality standards. Nor does it speak to content or the needs for education that is suited to the needs of children in a rapidly changing world.

In summary, as one examines unalienable rights, Maslow's hierarchy, and a variety of Declarations of Human Rights, one must interpret them in light of today's and tomorrow's world. This is an ongoing challenge to the educational systems throughout the world. It is also an ongoing challenge to parents and to children.

In a 2002 interview, Howard Gardner was asked the question: "Why do people need education?" Here is his response:


 * Well, I think a lot depends on the word “need.” Evolutionarily speaking, the only goal is to survive until you have offspring. But as culture exists, it develops, at a minimum, for people to survive to reproduction, And to be kept in a community, people at least have to be raised in the norms or values of that community. Otherwise, they won’t survive, they will be killed or expelled.


 * Every culture that we know transmits knowledge, skills, values to offspring. So when I’m talking about education I should indicate whether I mean formal or informal education. Once you begin to talk about symbol systems, including notational ones that are part of curricula, then most people will not learn such systems by themselves. Formal schooling probably began most fundamentally so people could make sense of formal symbol systems. And now, of course, we have lots of different kinds of symbol systems.

Changes in Technology
The writers of the US Declaration of Independence had deep insight into the goals they were willing to fight for to achieve. These unalienable rights, the general ideas in the Constitution, and the Constitution's initial set of amendments have held up quite well for well over 200 years.

However, it has taken continuing effort by our government and people to reinterpret and modify these goals to make them continue to work as the world and our country have changed.

As a simple minded example, the telegraph,electrical light bulbs, telephone, cars, airplanes radio, television, computers, and communications satellites had not been invented at the time of the US Revolutionary War. The initial education systems in our country have had to change a great deal over the years to support the needs of the country and its people. Federal projects such as rural electrification and a national highway system have played key roles.

The pace of technological change is quickening. Among other things, this is making the world "smaller" from a transportation, communication, and interdependence among nations point of view.

Such changes are stressful to people. They stress many different components of our society, including our education system, our medical system, and our basic cultures.

A "good" education helps to prepare students for the types of changes going on locally, regionally, nationally, and globally.It needs to be future oriented. Much of our current educational system fails to meet such criteria.

Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is based on the idea of a large number of people contributing their ideas and other resources to help solve problems and accomplish tasks. See:


 * Howe, Jeff (2008). Crowdsourcing: Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business. NY: Crown Business.

The book contains a number of examples in which large numbers of people supply content to the web and are consumers of what they and others provide. Examples include the Wikipedia, MySpace, and Facebook.

Quoting from the end of Howe's book:


 * Another way of thinking about this is that successful crowdsourcing involves satisfying the uppermost tier of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. People are drawn to participate because some psychological, social, or emotional need is being met. [Bold added for emphasis.]

Author or Authors
The initial version of this document was written by David Moursund.