Tuesday, November 21, 2006

How Education Affects People Behaviour (First Part)

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."

Albert Einstein

Which is the purpose of the education? There are many answers to a similar question.

There is one of them, however, that seems essential to me: the education first of all has to allow the adaptation of an individual (and of a society) to its environment.

It has to be a tool of survival.

It was always state so, during the history of the humanity: the things that a generation handed down to the other one were the fruit of the preceding experiences.

These were destined to resolve better the daily problems both as it regarded the ability to go to hunting or to build a shelter.

The knowledge that was handed down could concern besides the respect of certain rules of behaviour towards the other members of the group, with the purpose to maintain the cohesion among the individuals.

The cohesion was necessary for the survival of the single ones.

Already in the most primitive associative forms they are glimpse, in short, those that are undoubtedly the two fundamental aspects of the education: the knowledge and the values.

The knowledge of the problems and the way of resolving them, for example the ability to build and to use a lance or that to build and to use a computer and the values to suit oneself to the environment.

Arsenals of models of behaviour (encoded in the ethics, in the traditions, in the laws) protect the survival of the individual through that of his/her group of affiliation.

The education has always had this fundamental function of survival and it continuous to have also nowadays.

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