Time for Change has a post of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The theory that Abraham Maslow proposed in 1943 contends that as humans meet “basic needs”, they seek to satisfy successively ‘higher needs’ that occupy a set hierarchy or order, which means an individual must satisfy one set of basic needs before moving on to achieve the next level of needs.
I was introduced to Maslow’s theory of needs sometime during the nine years I spent in college, and it applies to education since learning is a need but where does this sit in the hierarchy?
If you were to click on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you would discover that the first order of needs that must be met are breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion.
The second most important set of needs is security of body, of employment, of resources, of morality, of family, of health, and of property.
If level one and two are met, then friendship, family and sexual intimacy become the number one priority an individual needs at level three, which is labeled love and/or belonging.
Have you seen education or learning yet?
If you check out the five different levels of needs that must be satisfied before the next level becomes important to an individial, you will discover that achievement is on the fourth level and problem solving and creativity are on the fifth level.
It is obvious that survival comes first before an individual is ready to focus on what it takes to earn an education, which is linked to achievement.
If a child is hungry, doesn’t feel secure, has poor health and lives in a dysfunctional family, then she is not going to make education a priority, and it doesn’t matter how great the teacher is.
Continued on August 15, 2011, in Needs versus Education – What comes first? – Part 2
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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