THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
The development of human beings' cognitive, emotional, intellectual, and social
capabilities and functioning over the course of a normal life span, from infancy through
old age. It is the subject matter of the discipline known as developmental psychology.
Man's instincts, behavioral changes and adaptability speak of his being different
and higher creature. His power of imagination, intelligence and reflective capacity raise
him much above the rest of the living beings. His conception of time and space, the
eternal and the temporal, the spiritual and the material, magnifies him as the most
suitable incumbent for the office of viceregency. His compassion urges him to raise
solid edifices of charity and utility.
Teaching is an act of piety. Learning is perpetuating the legacy of knowledge,
man has inherited. The transfer of knowledge is a humanistic transaction.
Emerson writes on education:
"The secret of education lines in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose
what he should know, what he shall do. It is chosen and doer ordained and he
only holds the key to his own secret".
"When a man stupid becomes a man inspired, when one and the same man
passes out of the torpid into the perceiving state, leaves the din of trifles, this stupor of
the senses, to enter into the quasi omniscience of high thoughts- up and down, around,
all limits disappear. He sees things in their causes, all facts in their connections".
"We teach boys to be such man as we are. We don’t teach them to aspire to be
all they can. We don’t give them training as if we believed in their noble nature. We
scarce educate their bodies. We don’t train the eye and the hand. We exercise their
understanding to the apprehension and comparison of some facts, to a skill in numbers,
in words, we aim to make accountants, attorneys engineers, but not make able, earnest
great-hearted man. The great object of nature should be commensurate with the object
of life. It should be moral one; to teach self-truth, to inspire the youthful man with an
interest in himself, with a curiosity touching his own nature, to acquaint with the sources
, of his mind and to teach that there is all his strength and it inflames him with a piety
towards grand minds in which he lives".
Learning is a continuous process. As long as the new discoveries in the universe
keep coming up, man will keep learning with enthusiasm, out of necessity. But first he
learns what comes to him as his heritage – as the best creation. He first learns
instinctively, then through senses and when he reaches a higher stage, he learns
through institution, and becomes creative. Psychologically, learning refers to the mental
process that lead to solutions, ideas, conceptualizations, artistic forms, theories or
products that are unique and novel. Every moment, new experiences encounter man
and he is made to learn sometimes in an organized manner, while at others in the
informal way: -
"Without learning, life is but an image of death." (Cato)
"The living man who doesn’t learn in dark, like one walking in the night."
(William Milne)
"Learning without thought is useless, thought without learning is dangerous."
(Confucius)
"There is no royal road to learning; and what is life but learning".
(Charles Dickens)
The two great classical theories of knowledge, rationalism and empiricism have
generated different conceptions of knowledge and acquisition of it. For empiricist, mind
is like a great mirror which passively receives reflections from without, while for
rationalist, the mind is more active.
Psychology has made the acquisition of knowledge an empiricist exercise. It is
more of a mechanistic view and now that it is computer stimulated, the rationalist lags
behind. The human mind, as it looks, is an extension of the computer. It looks like the
hunter has the prey. If the human learning continues to follow the same line the
behavioral changes may suggest monotony and stagnation. Man wouldn’t go out of a
stereo typed behavioral pattern for the fear of outgrowing his commercial size. The
modification of behavior from experience and environment will be computer simulated,
The development of human beings' cognitive, emotional, intellectual, and social
capabilities and functioning over the course of a normal life span, from infancy through
old age. It is the subject matter of the discipline known as developmental psychology.
Man's instincts, behavioral changes and adaptability speak of his being different
and higher creature. His power of imagination, intelligence and reflective capacity raise
him much above the rest of the living beings. His conception of time and space, the
eternal and the temporal, the spiritual and the material, magnifies him as the most
suitable incumbent for the office of viceregency. His compassion urges him to raise
solid edifices of charity and utility.
Teaching is an act of piety. Learning is perpetuating the legacy of knowledge,
man has inherited. The transfer of knowledge is a humanistic transaction.
Emerson writes on education:
"The secret of education lines in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose
what he should know, what he shall do. It is chosen and doer ordained and he
only holds the key to his own secret".
"When a man stupid becomes a man inspired, when one and the same man
passes out of the torpid into the perceiving state, leaves the din of trifles, this stupor of
the senses, to enter into the quasi omniscience of high thoughts- up and down, around,
all limits disappear. He sees things in their causes, all facts in their connections".
"We teach boys to be such man as we are. We don’t teach them to aspire to be
all they can. We don’t give them training as if we believed in their noble nature. We
scarce educate their bodies. We don’t train the eye and the hand. We exercise their
understanding to the apprehension and comparison of some facts, to a skill in numbers,
in words, we aim to make accountants, attorneys engineers, but not make able, earnest
great-hearted man. The great object of nature should be commensurate with the object
of life. It should be moral one; to teach self-truth, to inspire the youthful man with an
interest in himself, with a curiosity touching his own nature, to acquaint with the sources
, of his mind and to teach that there is all his strength and it inflames him with a piety
towards grand minds in which he lives".
Learning is a continuous process. As long as the new discoveries in the universe
keep coming up, man will keep learning with enthusiasm, out of necessity. But first he
learns what comes to him as his heritage – as the best creation. He first learns
instinctively, then through senses and when he reaches a higher stage, he learns
through institution, and becomes creative. Psychologically, learning refers to the mental
process that lead to solutions, ideas, conceptualizations, artistic forms, theories or
products that are unique and novel. Every moment, new experiences encounter man
and he is made to learn sometimes in an organized manner, while at others in the
informal way: -
"Without learning, life is but an image of death." (Cato)
"The living man who doesn’t learn in dark, like one walking in the night."
(William Milne)
"Learning without thought is useless, thought without learning is dangerous."
(Confucius)
"There is no royal road to learning; and what is life but learning".
(Charles Dickens)
The two great classical theories of knowledge, rationalism and empiricism have
generated different conceptions of knowledge and acquisition of it. For empiricist, mind
is like a great mirror which passively receives reflections from without, while for
rationalist, the mind is more active.
Psychology has made the acquisition of knowledge an empiricist exercise. It is
more of a mechanistic view and now that it is computer stimulated, the rationalist lags
behind. The human mind, as it looks, is an extension of the computer. It looks like the
hunter has the prey. If the human learning continues to follow the same line the
behavioral changes may suggest monotony and stagnation. Man wouldn’t go out of a
stereo typed behavioral pattern for the fear of outgrowing his commercial size. The
modification of behavior from experience and environment will be computer simulated,
