Maybe the following will help. My book Humanistic
Education deals with public education.
CARL
ROGERS AND HUMANISTIC EDUCATION
(Chapter 5 in Patterson, C. H. Foundations for a Theory of
Instruction and Educational Psychology. Harper & Row, 1977)
INTRODUCTION
Carl Ransom Rogers (1902- was born in Oak Park, Illinois, the fourth
of six children in a home which he describes as marked by close family ties, a
very strict and uncompromising religious and ethical atmosphere, and what
amounted to the virtue of hard work. "He writes that he was "a pretty
solitary boy."(1) When he was 12, his family bought a farm, as a hobby for
his well-to-do father, but also, Rogers speculates, to keep the growing children
from the "temptations" of suburban life. On the farm Carl became
interested in and studied the great nightflying moths and became a student of
scientific agriculture, a background which later led him to recognize the
importance of research in evaluating the effectiveness of counseling or
psychotherapy.
Rogers entered the University of Wisconsin to study agriculture, but,
influenced by a religious conference, decided he would enter the ministry. He
then changed his major to history, which he felt would be better undergraduate
preparation. In his junior year (1922) he was selected as one of a dozen
American student delegates to the World Christian Federation Conference in
China. This experience, lasting six months in all, led to his recognizing that
there were great differences in religious doctrines, and he broke with the
doctrines of his parents.
After graduation from college in 1924 (Phi Beta Kappa), Rogers married a
childhood sweetheart and, with her, went to Union Theological Seminary, where
he spent two years. Here, he and some other students, dissatisfied with
teaching in which they felt that ideas were being fed to them, asked for, and
were allowed to set up, their own seminar (with an instructor sitting in). The
result was that Rogers and some of the others "thought themselves right
out of religious work.' He had been interested in lectures and courses in
psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, and moved gradually into
clinical psychology, working in child guidance. He obtained an internship at
the just-established Institute for Child Guidance, where be came under the
influence of Freudian psychology.
After receiving the MA degree from Columbia University in 1928, be was employed
as a psychologist in the Child Study Department of the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Children in Rochester, New York. In 1930 he became director of
the department. He received the PhD from Columbia University in 1931, while
continuing to work in Rochester. In 1938 he helped organize, and became
director of, the Rochester Guidance Center. In 1939 his first book, The
Clinical Treatment of the Problem Child, was
published, based on his experience with children.
It was during the years at Rochester that Rogers began to question the
effectiveness of the traditional directive, or "the-therapist
knows-best," approach to counseling or psychotherapy. It was also during
this period that he became aware of and influenced by the work of Otto Rank,
through a social worker trained at the Pennsylvania School of Social Work.
In 1940 he accepted a position as professor of psychology at Ohio State
University, and in 1942 published his second book, Counseling and
Psychotherapy: Newer Concepts in Practice. This
was a statement of an approach which came to be called nondirective counseling or
psychotherapy, and later, client-centered counseling or psychotherapy. In 1945
he went to the University of Chicago as professor of psychology and executive
secretary of the university counseling center, where he remained until 1957,
and wrote Client-Centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications
and Theory (1951), In 1957 he was appointed
professor of psychology and of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, where
he directed a study of psychotherapy with hospitalized patients in a mental
hospital, the results of which were published in The Therapeutic
Relationship and Its Impact: A Study of Psychotherapy with Schizophrenics (with E. T. Gendlin, D. Kiesler, and C. B. Truax). In
1962-1963 he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences at Stanford University.
Rogers then went to the newly established Western Behavioral Sciences Institute
in La Jolla, California, as a resident fellow. In 1968 the Center for Studies
of the Person was formed by Rogers and others from the institute, and he has
continued there as a resident fellow. During this period be became involved in
the group movement and has extended his theory to the basic encounter group: In
1970 he published Carl Rogers on Encounter Groups. He also became interested in the application of his
theory to education, and in 1969 published Freedom to Learn. More recently he has become interested in the
marriage ,relationship, and in 1972 published Becoming Partners:
Marriage and Its Alternatives.
Rogers has been visiting professor or has
taught part-time at Columbia University, the University of California at Los
Angeles, Harvard University, Occidental College, California Western University,
and the University of California. He was awarded the Nicholas Murray Butler
Medal (Silver) by Columbia University in 1955, and the Doctor of Humane Letters
by Lawrence College in 1956. In 1956 he was among three psychologists who
received the first Distinguished Scientific Awards of the American
Psychological Association. In 1972 he received the first Distinguished
Professional Contribution Award of the association. Rogers was a charter member
and later a fellow and president (1944-1945) of the American Association for
Applied Psychology. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association,
of which he was president in 1946-1947, and was president of its Division of
Clinical and Abnormal Psychology in 1949-1950. He is a fellow of The American
Orthopsychiatric Association, of which he was vice resident in 1941-1942. He
was a charter member, and president in 1956, of the American Academy of
Psychotherapists.
Although Rogers began his clinical work with children, most of his experience
has been with adults. His client-centered therapy has been widely taught and
practiced, and has been the subject of more research than any other method of
counseling or psychotherapy. This is no doubt because Rogers himself has been
an unusual combination of therapist and researcher. He has also been interested
in theory regarding the nature of the individual and human personality and
development as revealed in the process of therapy. In his 1951 book he
presented a theory of personality and its change, which he developed further,
and more systematically, in a 1959 publication, which is the source from which the
following summary is drawn. (2)
CONCEPTS
AND THEORY
Certain basic convictions and attitudes underlie the theoretical
formulation: (3) (1) Research and theory are directed toward the satisfaction
of the need to order significant experience. (2) Science is acute observation
and careful and creative thinking on the basis of such observation, not simply
laboratory research involving instruments and computing machines. (3) Science
begins with gross observations, crude measurements, and speculative hypotheses,
and progresses toward more refined hypotheses and measurements. (4) The
language of independent, intervening, and dependent variables, while applicable
to advanced stages of scientific endeavor, is not adapted to the beginning and
developing stages. (5) In the early stages of investigation and theory
construction, inductive rather than hypothetico-deductive methods are more
appropriate. (6) Every theory has a greater or lesser degree of error; a theory
only approaches the truth, and it requires constant change and modification.
(7) Truth is unitary, so that "any theory, derived from almost any segment
of experience, if it were complete and completely accurate, could be extended
indefinitely to provide meaning for other very remote areas of
experience." (4) However, even a slight error in a theory may lead to
completely false inferences when the theory is projected to a remote area. (8)
Although there may be such a thing as objective truth, individuals live in
their own personal and subjective worlds. "Thus there is no such thing as
Scientific Knowledge, there are only individual perceptions of what appears to
each person to be such knowledge." (5)
These attitudes, convictions, or assumptions may be taken as representing the
approach of humanistic (and phenomenological) psychology. They underlie the
theoretical statements which follow. Humanistic psychology focuses upon the
experiencing person and his distinctively human qualities-choice, creativity,
valuation' dignity and worth, and the development of his potentials.
Phenomenological psychology studies behavior from the point of view or frame of
reference of the behaving person. Both thus emphasize the individual person,
rather than group averages or characteristics. Both derive from an
existential-phenomenological philosophy of human beings and their worlds.
Human
Nature and the Individual
The common concept of human beings is that
they are by nature irrational, unsocialized, and destructive of themselves and
others. The client-centered point of view sees people, on the contrary, as
basically rational, socialized, forward-moving, and realistic. (6) This is a
point of view developing out of experience in therapy rather than preceding it.
Antisocial emotions exist-jealousy, hostility, and the rest-and are evident in
therapy. But these are not spontaneous impulses which must be controlled.
Rather they are reactions to the frustration of more basic impulses for love,
belonging, and security. People are basically cooperative, constructive, and
trustworthy, and when they are free from defensiveness their reactions are
positive, forward-moving, and constructive. There is then no need to be
concerned about controlling people's aggressive, antisocial impulses; given the
possibility of fulfilling their basic impulses, they will become
self-regulatory, balancing their needs against each other. A person's need for
affection and companionship, for example, will balance any aggressive reaction
or extreme need for sex, or other needs that would interfere with the
satisfactions of other persons. Human beings are thus basically good, though
with potential for aggressive or antisocial behavior, which is provoked by
threat to or frustration of basic needs.
Individuals possess the capacity to experience in awareness the factors in
their psychological maladjustment and have the capacity and the tendency to
move away from a state of maladjustment toward a state of psychological
adjustment. These capacities and this tendency a
will be released in a relationship which has the characteristics of a
therapeutic relationship. The tendency toward adjustment is the tendency toward
self-actualization. Psychotherapy is thus the releasing of an already existing
capacity in the individual. Philosophically, the individual "has the
capacity to guide, regulate, and control himself, providing only that certain
definable conditions exist. Only in the absence of these conditions, and not in
any basic sense, is it necessary to provide external control and regulation of
the individual." (7) When the individual is provided with reasonable
conditions for growth, his or her potentials will develop constructively, as a
seed grows and becomes its potential.
Definitions
of Constructs
The theory of therapy and personality
makes use of a number of concepts or constructs. These are briefly defined
prior to their use in the theory. (8)
Actualizing Tendency: "The inherent tendency of the organism
to develop all its capacities in ways which serve to maintain or enhance the
organism."
Tendency Toward Self-Actualization: The
expression of the general tendency toward actualization in "that portion
of experience of the organism which is symbolized in the self."
Experience (noun): All that is going on in
the organism at a given time, whether in awareness or potentially available to
awareness, of a psychological nature; the "experiential field," or
the "phenomenal field" of Combs and Snygg. (9)
Experience (verb): To receive in the
organism the impact of sensory or physiological events which are happening at
the moment.
Feeling I Experience of a
Feeling: "An emotionally tinged
experience,
together with its personal meaning."
Awareness, Symbolization, Consciousness: The
representation of some portion of experience.
Availability to Awareness: Capability
of being symbolized freely without denial or distortion.
Accurate Symbolization: The potential
correspondence of syrnbolization in awarenes with
the results of testing the transitional hypothesis which it represents.
Perceiving, Perception: "A
hypothesis or prognosis for action which comes into awareness when stimuli
impinge on the organism." Perception and awareness are synonymous, the former emphasizing the stimulus
in the process. Perceiving is becoming aware of stimuli.
Subceive, Subception: "Discrimination
without awareness.,,,
Self-Experience: "Any event
or entity in the phenomenal field discriminated by the individual as 'self,'
'me,' 'I,' or related thereto."
Self, Concept of Self, Self-Structure: "The organized consistent conceptual gestalt composed of
perceptions of the characteristics of the 'I' or 'me' and the perceptions of
the relationships of the 'I' or 'me' to others and the various aspects of life,
together with the values attached to these perceptions."
Ideal Self: "The
self-concept which the individual would most like to possess.
Incongruence Between Self and Experience: A discrepancy between the perceived self and actual experience,
accompanied by tension and internal confusion and discordant or
incomprehensible (for example, neurotic) behavior. The discrepancy arises from
conflict between the actualizing and self-actualizing tendencies.
Vulnerability: "The state of
incongruence between self and experience," with emphasis on "the
potentialities of this state for creating psychological disorganization."
Anxiety:
"Phenomenologically, a state of uneasiness or tension whose cause is
unknown. From an external frame of reference, anxiety is a state in which the
incongruence between the concept of the self and the total experience of the
individual is approaching symbolization in awareness.
Threat: "The state which
exists when an experience is perceived or anticipated (subceived) as
incongruent with the structure of the self'; an external view of what is,
phenomenologically, anxiety.
Psychological Adjustment: Complete
congruence, complete openness to experience.
Psychological Maladjustment: The
state which exists when the organism denies or distorts awareness of
significant experience, resulting in incongruence between self and experience;
incongruence viewed from a social standpoint.
Defense, Defensiveness: "The
behavioral response of the organism to threat, the goal of which is the
maintenance of the current structure of the self."
Distortion in Awareness, Dehial to Awareness: Denial or distortion of experience which is
inconsistent with the self-concept, by which the goal of defense is achieved;
the mechanisms of defense.
Intensionality: The characteristics of the behavior of the individual who is in
a defensive state-rigidity, overgeneralization, abstraction from reality,
absolute and unconditional evaluation of experience, and so on.
Extensionality: Perception which
is differentiated, dominated by facts rather than concepts, with awareness of
the space-time anchorage of facts and of different levels of abstraction.
Congruence, Congruence of Self and Experience: The state in which self-experiences are accurately
symbolized in the self-concept: integrated, whole, genuine.
Openness to Experience: Absence
of threat; the opposite of defensiveness.
Mature, Maturity: An individual
is mature "when he perceives realistically and in an extensional manner,
is not defensive, accepts the f being different from others, accepts the
responsibility responsibility for his own behavior, evaluates experience in
terms of the evidence coming from his own senses, changes his evaluation of
experience only on the basis of new experience, accepts others as unique
individuals different from himself, prizes himself, and prizes others."
Maturity is the behavior exhibited by an individual who is congruent.
Contact: The minimal essential of
a relationship, in which each of two individuals "makes a perceived or
subceived difference in the experiential field of the other."
Positive Regard: One's perception
of some self-experience of another which makes a positive difference in one's
experiential field, resulting in a feeling of warmth, liking, respect,
sympathy, acceptance toward the other.
Need for Positive Regard: A
secondary or learned need for love, affection, and so on.
Unconditional Positive Regard: Perception
of the self-experiences of another with discrimination as to greater or lesser
worthiness; prizing, acceptance.
Regard Complex: "All those
self-experiences, together with their interrelationships, which the individual
discriminates as being related to the positive regard of a particular social
other."
Positive Self-Regard: "A
positive attitude toward the self which is no longer directly dependent on the
attitude of others."
Need for Self-Regard: A secondary
or learned need for positive self-regard.
Unconditional Self-Regard:
Perception of the self "in such a way that no self-experience can be
discriminated as more or less worthy of positive regard than any other."
Conditions of Worth: The valuing
of an experience by an individual positively or negatively "solely because
of . . . conditions of worth which he has taken over from others, not because
the experience enhances or fails to enhance his organism.
Locus of Evaluation: The source
of evidence as to values, either internal or external.
Organismic Valuing Process: "An
ongoing process in which values are never fixed or rigid, but experiences are
being accurately symbolized and continually and freshly valued in terms of the
satisfactions organismically experienced." The actualizing tendency is the
criterion.
Internal Frame of Reference: "All
of the realm of experience which is available to the awareness of the
individual at a given moment"; the subjective world of the individual.
Empathy: The state of perceiving
"the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy, and with the
emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto, as if one were the
other person, but without ever losing the 'as if' condition." External
Frame of Reference: Perceiving "solely
from one's own subjective frame of reference without empathizing with the
observed person or object."
A
Theory of Personality (10)
Characteristics of the human
infant. Infants perceive
their own experience as reality; for them, their own experience is reality.
They are endowed with an inherent tendency toward actualizing their organisms.
Their behavior is goal directed, directed toward satisfying the need for
actualization through interaction with their perceived reality. In such an
interaction an infant behaves as an organized whole. Experiences are valued
positively or negatively, in an organismic valuing process, in terms of their
maintaining or not maintaining the infant's actualizing tendency. The infant is
adient toward (approaches) positively valued experiences, and abient toward
(avoids) those which are negatively valued.
The development of the self.
As a result of the
tendency toward differentiation (which is an aspect of the actualizing tendency),
part of the individual's experience becomes symbolized in awareness as
self-experience. Through interaction with significant others in the
environment, this self-experience leads to a concept of self, a perceptual
object in the experiential field.
The need for positive
regard. With
awareness of the self, the need for positive regard from others develops. The
satisfaction of this need is dependent on inferences regarding the experiential
fields of others. Satisfaction of this need is reciprocal in human beings, in
that one's positive regard is satisfied when one perceives oneself as
satisfying another's need. The positive regard of a significant social other
can be more powerful than the individual's organismic valuing process.
The development of the need for self-regard. A need for self-regard develops
from the association of satisfaction or frustration of the need for positive
regard with self-experiences. The experience of or loss of positive regard thus
becomes independent of transactions with any social other.
Development of conditions of worth.
Self-regard becomes selective as significant others discriminate the
self-experiences of the individual as more or less worthy of positive regard.
The evaluation of a self-experience as more or less worthy of self-regard
constitutes a condition of worth. The experiencing of only unconditional
positive regard would avoid the development of conditions of worth and lead to
unconditional self-regard, to congruence of the needs for positive regard and
self-regard with organismic evaluation, and to the maintenance of psychological
adjustment.
The development of incongruence between self and experience. The need for self-regard leads to selective
perception of experiences in terms of conditions of worth, so that experiences
in accord with one's conditions of worth are perceived and symbolized
accurately in awareness, but experiences contrary to the conditions of worth
are perceived selectively or distortedly, or denied to awareness. This presence
of self-experiences which are not organized into the self-structure in
accurately symbolized form results in the existence of some degree of
incongruence between self and experience, in vulnerability, and in
psychological maladjustment.
The development of discrepancies in behavior.
Incongruence between self and experience leads to incongruence in behavior, so
that some behaviors are consistent with the self-concept and are accurately
symbolized in awareness, while other behaviors actualize those experiences of
the organism which are not assimilated I into the selfstructure and have thus
not been recognized, or have been distorted to make them congruent with the
self.
The experience of threat and process of defense. An experience which is incongruent with the
self-concept is subceived as threatening. If this experience were accurately
symbolized in awareness it would introduce inconsistency in the self-structure
and a state of anxiety would exist. The process of defense prevents this,
keeping the total perception of the experience consistent with the
self-structure and the conditions of worth. The consequences of defense are
rigidity in perception, an inaccurate perception of reality, and
intensionality.
The process of breakdown and disorganization. In a situation where a significant experience
demonstrates the presence of a large or significant incongruence between self
and experience, the process of defense is unable to operate successfully.
Anxiety is then experienced, to a degree depending on the extent of the self-structure
which is threatened. The experience becomes accurately symbolized in awareness,
and a state of disorganization results. The organism behaves at times in ways
consistent with the experiences which have been distorted or denied and at
times in ways consistent with the concept of the self, with its distorted or
denied experiences.
The process of reintegration. For
an increase in congruence to occur, there must be a decrease in conditions of
worth, and an increase in unconditional self-regard. The communicated
unconditional positive regard of a significant other is one way of meeting
these conditions. In order to be communicated, unconditional positive regard
must exist in a context of empathic understanding. When this is perceived by
the individual, it leads to the weakening or dissolving of existing conditions
of worth. The individual's own unconditional positive regard is then increased,
while threat is reduced and congruence develops. The individual is then less
susceptible to perceiving threat, less defensive, more congruent, has increased
self-regard and positive regard for others, and is more psychologically
adjusted. The organismic valuing process becomes increasingly the basis of
regulating behavior, and the individual becomes more nearly fully functioning.
The occurrence of these conditions and their results constitute psychotherapy.
A
Theory of Interpersonal Relationships (11)
The conditions of a deteriorating relationship. "A person Y is willing to be in
contact with person X, and to receive communications from him. Person X desires
(at least to a minimal degree) to communicate to and be in contact with Y.
Marked incongruence exists in X among the following three elements: his
experience of the subject of communication with Y; the symbolization of this
experience in his awareness, in its relation to his self-concept; [and] his
conscious communicated expression (verbal and/or motor) of this
experience."
The process of a deteriorating relationship. Under the above conditions, the following
process occurs: "The communication of X to Y is contradictory and/or
ambiguous, containing , expressive behaviors which are consistent with X's
awareness of the experience to be communicated [and] expressive behaviors which
are consistent with those aspects of the experience not accurately symbolized
in X's awareness. Y experiences these contradictions and ambiguities. He tends
to be aware only of X's conscious communication. Hence this experience of X's
communication tends to be incongruent with his awareness of same [and]..... his
response tends also to be contradictory and/or ambiguous....... Since X is
vulnerable, he tends to perceive Y's responses as potentially
threatening." Thus he tends to perceive Y's response in a distorted way,
congruent to his own self-structure. He also perceives Y's internal frame of
reference inaccurately and thus is not empathic. As a result, be cannot and
does not experience unconditional positive regard for Y. Y thus experiences the
receipt of at most a selective positive regard, and a lack of understanding and
empathy. He is thus less free to express his feelings, to be extensional, to
express incongruencies between self and experience, and to reorganize his
selfconcept. As a result, X is, in turn, even less likely to empatbize, and
more likely to make defensive reactions. "Those aspects of experience
which are not accurately symbolized by X in his awareness tend, by defensive
distortio n of perception, to be perceived in Y.' Y then tends to be
threatened, and to show defensive behaviors.
The outcome of a deteriorating relationship. The process of deterioration leads to increased defensiveness on the
parts of X and Y. Communication becomes increasingly superficial. Perceptions
of self and others become organized more tightly. Thus, the
incongruence of self and experience remains in status quo, or is
increased.Psychological maladjustment is to some degree facilitated in both X
and Y.
The conditions of an improving relationship.
"A person, Y, is willing to be in
contact with person X!, and to receive communication from him. Person X'
desires to communicate to and be in contact with Y'. A high degree of
congruence exists in X' between the three following elements:(a) his experience
of the subject of communication with Y'; (b) the symbolization of this
experience in awareness in its relation to his self-concept; [and] (c) his
communicative expression of this experience.
The process of an improving relationship. "The communication of V to Y' is characterized by congruence of
experience, awareness, and communication. Y' experiences this congruence as a
clear communication. Hence his response is more likely to express a congruence
of his own experience and awareness." Y', being congruent and not
vulnerable, is able to perceive the response of Y' accurately and
extensionally, with empathy. Y' feels understood and experiences satisfaction
of his need for positive regard. "X' experiences himself as having made a
positive difference in the experiential field of Y'." X' reciprocally tends
to increase in feeling of positive regard for Y', and this positive regard for
Y' tends to be unconditional. The relationship Y' experiences has the
characteristics of the process of therapy. "Hence communication in both
directions becomes increasingly congruent, is increasingly accurately
perceived, and contains more reciprocal positive regard."
Outcomes of an improving relationship. As a result of an improving relationship, all the outcomes of therapy
may occur, within the limitations of the area of the relationship.
A tentative law of interpersonal relationship.
"Assuming a minimum mutual willingness to be in contact and to receive
communication, we may say that the greater the communicated congruence of
experience, awareness, and behavior on the part of the individual, the more the
ensuing relationship will involve a tendency toward reciprocal communication
with the same qualities, mutually accurate understanding of the
communications, improved psychological adjustment and functioning in both parties,
and mutual satisfaction in the relationship." (12) The concept of
congruence is important. Congruence is the accurate matching of physiological
experiencing with awareness, and the matching of these with what is
communicated. When congruence is lacking, there is ambiguity in
communication-words don't match nonverbal communication. When there is
incongruence between experiencing and awareness, the incongruent individual
does not recognize this. For example, a man may be unaware that his bodily
actions and tone of voice communicate anger, while in words he is claiming to
be cool, rational, and logical in an argument. An incongruence between
awareness and communication may also be deliberate, however, when a person is
deceitful and insincere. When a person is congruent, we know where be or she
stands; but we don't know what an incongruent person really means or feels, and
we have difficulty relating to or interacting with him or her. When two persons
who are congruent interact, they are able to listen to each other without
defensiveness, to understand each other empathically, to develop respect for
each other, in short, to be therapeutic for each other. Each will benefit in
improved psychological adjustment, becoming more unified and integrated, less
in conflict, more mature, and more satisfied in the relationship. In the case
of each person, the receiver of the communication must perceive the
communication of the other as it is, or is intended, without distortion or
misunderstanding. To the extent that each is congruent and to the extent that
each does not feel threatened, this is more likely to occur.
A
Theory of the Fully Functioning Person
The endpoint of optimal psychotherapy or
of facilitative interpersonal relationships, the state of maximal psychological
growth, is the fully functioning person. There are three characteristics, or
aspects, of such a person, though they integrate in unitary
organization or whole:
1. Openness to Experience. Having positive regard from others,
and positive self-regard, the fully functioning person is free from threat, and
thus free from defensiveness. The person is open to all his or her experiences, and stimuli are received and
processed through the nervous system without selectivity or distortion. Though there is not necessarily a
self-conscious awareness of organismic experiences, there is availability to awareness, there are no barriers or
inhibitions to prevent the full experiencing of whatever is organismically
present.
2. An Existential Mode of Living. Openness to experience means
that there is a newness to each moment of living, since the same situation of
inner and outer stimuli has never existed before. There is a fluidity of experiencing in which the self and
personality emerge from experience since each experience is new, the person
cannot predict specifically what he or she will do in advance. There is a
participation in experience without complete control of it. Living is
characterized by flexibility and adaptability, rather than rigidity. The
personality and the self are in flux; openness to experience is the most stable
personality characteristic.
3. The Organism as a Trustworthy Guide to Satisfying Behavior. The
fully functioning person does what "feels right" and finds this to
result in adequate or satisfying behavior. This is so since, being open to all
experience, she or he has all relevant data available, without denial or
distortion of any elements. These data include social demands as well as the
person's own complex system of needs. The total organism, including the
person's consciousness, processes these data like a complex computer. The total
organism is often wiser than consciousness alone. The organism is not
infallible, since data may be missing or unavailable. But the resulting
unsatisfying behavior provides corrective feedback.
The fully functioning person is characterized by optimal psychological
adjustment, optimal psychological maturity, complete congruence, complete
openness to experience, and complete extensionality. To help a person become
fully functioning is the goal of optimal psy-chotherapy.
These characteristics of the fully functioning person have relevance to values
and the valuing process. The locus of evaluation in the organismic valuing
process is internal, within the individual. This is characteristic of the
infant's approach to valuing, but in the process of socialization the locus of
evaluation usually becomes externalized as the individual seeks love,
acceptance, and social approval from significant others in his or her
environment. Value patterns are thus introjected, rather than being the result
of the persons own organismic valuing processes or experiencing. They are
rigid, and though they often include contradictory values, they are rarely
examined. They are often at variance with experiences, and this discrepancy,
Rogers believes, is the basis of insecurity and alienation within the
individual. In a therapeutic climate, in life or in therapy, some individuals
achieve the openness to their experiences and the maturity which return the
locus of evaluation to themselves. Although their valuing process is like that
in the infant, it is more complex, involving all the individual's past
experiences, including the effects or consequences of resulting behaviors on the
self and others. The criterion of the valuing process, as in the infant, is the
degree to which behaviors lead to self-enhancement or self-actualization.
The value directions which develop in persons as they become more fully
functioning are not idiosyncratic or unique but have a commonality which
extends through different cultures, suggesting that they are related to the
human species, enhancing the development of the individual and others, and
contributing to the survival and evolution of the species. These directions
include, according to Rogers, being real rather than presenting a facade,
valuing one's self and self-direction, valuing being a process rather than
having fixed goals, valuing sensitivity to and acceptance of others, valuing
deep relationships with others, and finally, and perhaps most important,
valuing an openness to all one's inner and outer experiences, including the
reactions and feelings of others. In other words, the older values of
sincerity, independence, and self-direction, self-knowledge, social
responsivity, social responsibility, and loving interpersonal relationships
appear to have a universality arising out of the nature of human beings as they
become, under conditions which have been found to be effective in psycbotherapy,
fully functioning persons. The characteristics of the fully functioning or
self-actualizing person include the conditions for the development of such
persons.
There are several implications of this concept which are of interest:
1. The fully functioning person is a creative person. Such a person could be, notes Rogers, one of Maslow's
"self-actualizing people," one of whose characteristics is
creativeness. (13) His or her sensitive openness and existential living would
foster creativeness through allowing awareness of relationships not observed by
others. He or she is not a conformist, and perhaps not always
"adjusted" to the culture, but is able to live constructively and
satisfy basic needs. "Such a person would, I believe, be recognized by the
student of evolution as the type most likely to adapt and survive under
changing environmental conditions. He would be able creatively to make sound
adjustments to new as well as old conditions. He would be a fit vanguard of
human evolution." (14)
2. The fully functioning person is constructive and trustworthy. The basic nature of individuals is good, individually
and socially, when they are functioning freely. When we are able to free
individuals from defensiveness, so that they are open to the wide range of
their own needs, as well as the range of environmental and social demands,
their reactions may be trusted to be positive, forward-moving, constructive. We
do not need to ask who will socialize them, for one of each person's deepest
needs is affiliation with and communication with others. When people are fully
themselves, they cannot help but be realistically socialized. We do not need to
ask who will control the individual's aggressive impulses, for when one is open
to all of one's impulses, the need to be liked by others and the tendency to
give affection are as strong as impulses to strike out and seize for oneself.
The individual will be aggressive in situations in which aggression is
realistically appropriate, but there will be no runaway need for aggression. When
a person is open to all his or her experience, his or her total behavior, in
these and other areas, is balanced and realistic behavior appropriate to the
survival and enhancement of a highly social animal. (15)
3. His or her behavior is dependable but not predictable. Since the particular pattern of inner and outer
stimuli at each moment is unique, fully functioning people are not able to
predict their behavior in a new situation, but they appear dependable to
themselves, and are confident that their behavior is appropriate. Upon later
analysis by another person, a scientist, for example, the fully functioning
persons behavior will appear lawful; the scientist can postdict but not predict
it. Science cannot collect and analyze all the necessary data, even with a
computer, before the behavior has occurred. This suggests that the science of
psychology, when it deals with the fully functioning person, will be
characterized by understanding (of the lawfulness of behavior which has
occurred) rather than by prediction and control.
4. The fully functioning person is free, not determined. Science has shown that we live in a world
where cause and effect operate. Behavior can be controlled by external or
environmental conditions and events. Yet the individual can be free to choose
how to act. Rogers reports his experiences with clients in therapy who in the
process have made decisions and choices which have changed their behaviors and
their lives. He says: "I would be at a loss to explain the positive change
which can occur in psychotherapy if I had to omit the importance of the sense
of free and responsible choice on the part of my clients. I believe that this
experience of freedom to choose is one of the deepest elements underlying
change." (16)
This freedom is an inner freedom, an attitude or realization of one's ability
to think one's own thoughts, live one's own life choosing what one wants to be
and being responsible for one's self. it is something that is phenomenological
rather than external. It is not a contradiction to the cause and effect
apparent in the psychological universe, but a complement to such a universe.
"Freedom rightly understood is a fulfillment by the person of the ordered
sequence of his life. The free man moves out voluntarily, freely, responsibly,
to play his significant part in a world whose determined events move through
him and through his spontaneous choice and will." (17) It exists in a
different dimension than external cause and effect.
Individuals differ in the extent to which they are free from influence and
control by others and external events. Rogers cites the findings of several
studies in which subjects who yielded or conformed or were susceptible to
control in psychological experiments differed from those who did not conform. They
panic I red under stress, showed feelings of inadequacy and personal
inferiority, were lacking in openness and freedom in emotional processes and in
spontaneity, and were emotionally restricted and inhibited. The nonconformists,
on the, other hand, were able to cope effectively with stress, were more
self-contained and autonomous in their thinking, had a sense of competence and
personal adequacy, and were more open, free, and spontaneous. Thus the sense of
personal freedom and responsibility make a difference in behavior.
Rogers points out the parallel between the characteristics of these subjects
and of those individuals who experience freedom and responsibility as they
progress in therapy, and the fully functioning person:
He wills or chooses to follow the course of action which is the most economical
vector in relation to all the internal and external stimuli, because it is that
behavior which will be most deeply satisfying. But this is the same course of
action which from another vantage point may be said to be determined by all the
factors in the existential situation. Let us contrast this with the picture of
the person who is defensively organized. He wills or chooses to follow a given
course of action, but finds that be cannot behave in the fashion that he
chooses. He is determined by the factors in the existential situation, but
these factors include his defensiveness, his denial or distortion of some of
the relevant data. Hence it is certain that his behavior will be less than
fully satisfying. His behavior is determined, but he is not free to make an
effective choice. The fully functioning person, on the other hand, not only
experiences, but utilizes, the most absolute freedom when he spontaneously,
freely, and voluntarily chooses and wills that which is absolutely determined.
(18)
The ideal fully functioning person does not exist. There are persons who can be
observed moving toward this goal in therapy, and in the best family and group
relationships, and in good educational experiences.
Summary
Scientific research and theory are attempts of man to order his
experiences. Science begins as empirical observations, leading to inductive
speculations and hypotheses and theory construction. Theory approaches truth,
but we can never know objective truth; we live in our own personal worlds, the
worlds that we subjectively perceive. One's experience of One's world is one's
reality.
The infant thus creates its own reality, its own world, on the basis of its
experiences with the physical and personal elements with which it interacts.
Its behavior is directed by one basic motive: to actualize the capacities or
potentials of the organism. Certain experiences are recognized as
self-experiences and are organized into a self-concept.
With awareness of the self the need for positive evaluation or regard of the
self from others, and of positive self-regard develop. But the regard of others
is not unconditional and thus creates conditions of worth-the individual is
more or less worthy of positive regard from self-regard. The need for positive
self-others, and thus of positive regard, however, leads to selective
perception of experiences, with those experiences which are inconsistent with
positive self-regard being denied to awareness or distorted. There is then
incongruity between self and experience, or psychological maladjustment.
Experiences which are inconsistent with the self-structure are threatening and
lead to defensiveness to avoid anxiety. Rigidity develops. Where the inconsistent
experience is strong, defense is unsuccessful, aAnxiety develops, and
disorganized or inconsistent behavior occurs.
Reorganization or reintegration occurs when there is a decrease in conditions
of worth, with an increase in unconditional positive regard from others in an
empathic atmosphere. Positive self-regard increases, with congruence between
the self and experience. The individual is more congruent, less defensive, and
more open to his experiences, showing more positive regard for others. He is
psychologically better adujsted, a more fully functioning person.
It is apparent that one's adjustment is a function of the nature of one's
interpersonal relationships. In poor interpersonal relationships there is
inconsistent or incongruent communication; lack of understanding-a failure to
perceive another's internal frame of reference accurately; the feeling of
threat, and lack of unconditional positive regard. In good interpersonal
relationships, on the other hand, there is clear or congruent communication, lack
of threat, empathy, and unconditional positive regard. These become reciprocal
in each participant.
Human beings are characterized by a tendency to move from a state of
maladjustment toward psychological adjustment. This is a manifestation of the
tendency toward self-actualization. Good interpersonal relationships facilitate
this tendency. The person who is free from external threat grows and develops.
Although the capacity for negative, irrational, aggressive behavior exists in
people, such behavior is manifested under conditions of threat and frustration.
When people are free from threat and experience congruence, unconditional
positive regard, and empathic understanding from others, they are basically
rational, constructive, and social. Such people are fully functioning, open to
all their experiences, living existentially, and trusting their organism as a
guide to satisfactory behavior. They are creative, constructive and
trustworthy, dependable though not predictable in advance, and free rather than
determined in their behavior. Their locus of evaluation is internal; their
values are those which enhance the actualization of the organism and the self.
These values are not self-centered or antagonistic to others; they are related
to the needs of the human species and its survival, and are common or universal
among cultures. They include the traditional values of sincerity or honesty,
autonomy, responsibility, and love.
FREEDOM
TO LEARN
In Freedom to Learn, Rogers
brought his thinking and experience about education and teaching together in a
book directed toward educators and teachers. This book, like a number of
earlier papers, is based on his experience and research in psychotherapy. As
his work in psychotherapy has focused upon the person and attitudes of the
therapist rather than upon techniques, so does his writing on education and
teaching focus upon the person and attitudes of the teacher rather than upon
methods or techniques of instruction. He expresses this focus in his statement
of the aim of education as the facilitation of learning:
We know that the facilitation of such learning rests not upon the teaching
skills of the leader, not upon his curricular planning, not upon his use of
audiovisual aids, not upon the programmed learning he utilizes, not upon his
lectures and presentations, not upon an abundance of books, though each of
these might at one time or another be utilized as an important resource. No,
the facilitation of significant learning rests upon certain attitudinal
qualities which exist in the personal relationship between the facilitator and
the learners. (19)
The
Crisis in Education
Education, says Rogers, is facing
challenges the response to which "will be one of the major factors in
determining whether mankind moves forward, or whether man destroys himself on
this planet, leaving this earth to those few living things which can withstand
atomic destruction and radioactivity." 20) The crisis is represented by a
number of questions which he poses:
1. Can education free itself from the past and past goals and prepare
individuals and groups to live in a world of accelerating change, if it is
possible for human beings to do so?
2. Can education deal effectively with increasing racial tensions and prevent
civil war among the world's races?
3. Can education prepare us to deal responsibly and communicatively with
increasing irrational nationalism and international tension, and help us
prevent nuclear destruction?
4. Can educators and educational institutions satisfy the revolt and objections
of youth against the imposed curriculums and impersonality of secondary and
higher education, or will learning move out of our institutions of learning,
leaving them to indoctrinate conformity?
5. Can the conservative, traditional, bureaucratic, rigid educational system
break out of the shackles of pressures for social conformity and deal with the
real problems of modern life?
6. Will education be taken over by business, with more innovation and responsiveness,
but with the motive of profit-making and emphasis upon producing profitable
"hardware"?
These are not issues of technology; they are philosophical, social, and
psychological issues. And they clearly relate not to the traditional subject
matter of education, that is, information and knowledge, or even cognitive or
intellectual development, but to the area of personal development and
interpersonal relationships.
The
Goal of Education
To resolve these crisis questions and to
assure human survival, the goal of education must be the facilitation of change
and learning. "The only man who is educated is the man who has learned how
to learn; the man who has learned how to adapt and change; the man who has
realized that no knowledge is secure, that only the process of seeking
knowledge gives a basis for security. Changingness, a reliance on process rather than upon static knowledge, is the only thing
that makes any sense as a goal for education in the modern world." (21)
This goal includes, but goes beyond, cognitive or intellectual education, to
include the education of the whole person. It involves personal growth and the
development of creativity and self-directed learning, The goal of education is
the same as the goal of psychotherapy: the fully functioning person. Openness
to experience; an existential way of living in which life is not static but an
ongoing, flexible, adaptive process; and trust in the organism as the basis for
behavior are characteristics of the person who is capable of continuing to
learn and to adapt to change, to meet the issues involved in the crisis in
education. The traditional concept of the "educated person" is no
longer relevant to our modern society.
The educator of the future "must know, at the deepest personal level, the
stance he takes in regard to life. Unless he has true convictions as to how his
values are arrived at, what sort of individual he hopes will emerge from his
educational organization, whether he is manipulating human robots, or dealing with
free individual persons, and what kind of a relationship he is striving to
build with these persons, he will have failed not only his profession, but his
culture." () is a far cry from, but more fundamental and important than,
concern with curriculums, methods, administration, and teaching techniques.
Two
Kinds of Learning
Learning may be conceived of as falling along a continuum of
meaning. At one end is meaningless learning-rote learning, exemplified by the
learning, or memorization, of nonsense syllables. Such learning is difficult
and does not last. Much of what is taught in schools involves such learning.
The material has no personal meaning for the student, does not involve feelings
or the whole person; it is learning occurring "from the neck up."
The learning which takes place in everyday life, experiential learning, has
meaning and personal relevance. Such learning is quick and is retained.
Learning a language in a native environment, as compared to learning it in a
classroom, illustrates the difference. Even though the stimulus for learning in
the first case may come from outside, from the necessity to adapt to the
society, it is in a real sense self-initiated. it also represents a personal
involvement. It is pervasive, influencing
the total person, including attitudes and behavior. It is evaluated by the
learner in terms of his or her needs-the locus of evaluation is internal. And
its essence is meaning.
Education traditionally has involved the first, meaningless kind of learning,
though many teachers and educators recognize the value of the second. To
implement the second approach would amount to a revolution in education. The
difficulties of implementing it in a practical way have stood in the way of
those who accept it theoretically. Rogers proposes ways in which it can be
implemented.
This second kind of learning is not noncognitive in nature. It involves
cognitive elements or aspects; but it combines these with the affective
elements involved in personal meaning. It recognizes that meaningful learning,
even of a cognitive nature, involves the total person.
The
Nature of Significant Learning
Significant-personal,
experiential-learning is learning which makes a difference to the person, in
behavior, attitudes, and personality. It is learning which leads to the
individual becoming a more fully functioning person. Such learning involves
certain principles (or hypotheses) which relate to the theory of human nature
and of human behavior presented earlier.
1. Human beings have a natural propensity for learning. They are by nature
curious; exploratory; desirous of discovering, knowing, and experiencing. Yet
there is an ambivalence toward learning; significant learning involves some
pain, either connected with the learning itself or with having to relinquish
earlier ]earnings. Learning to walk involves bumps and bruises. Learning that
some others are better than oneself in some respects is painful. But the gains
and satisfactions of learning, of developing one's potentials, are usually
greater than the pain, and learning continues.
2. Significant learning takes place when the subject matter is perceived by the
student as having relevance for her or his own purposes. A person learns
significantly only those things which are perceived as involving the
maintenance and enhancement of the self. Two students of equal ability learn
quite different things, or amounts, depending on bow they perceive the material
as relating to their needs and purposes. The speed of learning also varies. The
time for learning may be reduced by as much as two-thirds to four-fifths when
material is perceived as relevant to the learner Īs purposes.
3. Learning which involves a change in self-organization, or the perception of
the self, is threatening, and tends to be resisted. The self includes one's
values, beliefs, and basic attitudes, and when these are questioned they are
defended. To recognize that something new and different may be better, that one
is behind in things or inferior in some way, or inadequate, is defended
against.
4. Those learnings which are threatening to the self are more easily perceived
and assimilated when external threats are at a minimum. Pressure, ridicule,
shaming, and so on, increase resistance. But an accepting, understanding,
supportive environment removes or decreases threat and fear and allows the
learner to take a few steps or to try something and experience some success.
Teaching machines incorporate this idea.
5. When threat to the self or self-concept is low, experience can be perceived
in a differentiated fashion, and learning can proceed. This is why learning is
inhibited by threat and assisted by its lack. Threat disorganizes thinking: It
leads to distortion of perception, restriction of the perceptual field (a kind
of tunnel vision), even, in strong threat, to paralysis of thinking and action.
Freedom from threat to one's security, or ego, frees one to see the total
situation and to examine it-to "take it apart," manipulate it, put it
together -and to learn. Threats to the organism-even life-or-death threats can
be handled or responded to with all one's powers; but threats to the self or
the self-concept interfere with learning. Another way to view it is that threat
to the self leads to all-out efforts to maintain the self as it exists, but not
to change or growth in the self.
6. Much significant learning is acquired through doing. Experiential
involvement with practical or real problems promotes learning. Meaningfulness
and relevance are inherent in such situations.
7. Learning is facilitated when the student participates responsibly in the
learning process. When students choose their own objectives and directions,
formulate their own problems, discover their own resources, decide on and
follow their own courses of action, and experience and live with the
consequences, significant learning is maximized. Self-directed learning is
meaningful and relevant.
8. Self-initiated learning which involves the whole person of the
learner-feelings as well as intellect-is the most lasting and pervasive. The
learning is the learner's own, and becomes incorporated in her or him; it is
not something external or accepted on authority, and thus vulnerable to
questioning or another authority.
9. Independence, creativity, and self-reliance are all facilitated when
self-criticism and self-evaluation are basic and evaluation by others is of
secondary importance. Creativity needs freedom, freedom to try something
unusual, to take a chance, to make mistakes without being evaluated or judged a
failure.
10. The most socially useful learning in the modern world is the learning of
the process of learning, a continuing openness to experience and incorporation
into oneself of the process of change. Change is a central fact of current
life, and learning must be continuous.
Significant learning requires that we focus upon something other than the usual
concerns of teaching or education. It makes the question of what should be
taught, the curriculum, minor. Teaching as the imparting of @ knowledge is
useful in an unchanging environment. But in this modern world, are we justified
"in the presumption that we are wise about the future and the young are
foolish? Are we really sure as to what they should know? Then there is the
ridiculous question of coverage . . . based on the assumption that what is
taught is learned.
I know of no assumption so obviously untrue." (23) In a continually
changing world, information and knowledge quickly become out of date or
obsolete.
Significant learning involves the whole person; it combines cognitive and
affective-experiential elements. It is a unified learning, yet with awareness
of the different aspects. It does not separate the mind from the heart, from
feelings, as most education attempts to do. Rogers quotes Archibald McLeish in
this regard: "We do not feel our knowledge. Nothing could better
illustrate the flaw at the heart of our civilization. . . . Knowledge without
feeling is not knowledge and can lead only to public irresponsibility and
indifference, and conceivably to ruin." (24) Personal meaning, relevance,
significance involve feelings, attitudes, and beliefs.
Teaching
and Learning
If the only learning which can
significantly influence behavior is self-discovered, self-appropriated personal
learning, can learning be taught? Rogers, on the basis of his experience both
in psychotherapy and in teaching, has raised some serious questions. He states
them personally as follows (not all are listed here):
It seems to me that anything that can be taught to another is relatively inconsequential
and has little or no significant influence on behavior. . . .
Self -discovered learning, truth that has been personally
appropriated and assimilated in
experience, cannot be directly communicated to another. . . .
When I try to teach, as I do sometimes, I am appalled by the results, which
seem a little more than inconsequential, because sometimes the teaching appears
to succeed. When this happens I find that the results are damaging. it seems to
cause the individual to distrust his own experience, and to stifle significant
learning. Hence I have come to feel
that the outcomes of teaching are either unimportant or hurtful. . . .
As a consequence, I realize that I am only interested in being a
learner, preferably learning
things that matter, that have some significant influence on my own behavior. . . .
I find that one of the
best, but most difficult, ways for me to learn is to drop my oivn defensiveness, at least temporarily, and to try
to understand the way in which his experience seems and feels to the other person.
I find that another way for me to
learn is to state my own uncertainties, to
try to clarify my own puzzlements, and thus get closer to the meaning that my experience actually seems
to have. (25)
Such experience, he concludes, would imply
that we do away with teaching, Learning would take place in groups of people
who wanted to learn. But can this be done with children? What is the place of
the teacher in the learning of children?
The
Teacher as the Facilitator of Learning
Teaching, as usually defined and practiced, involves instruction,
imparting information, knowledge, or skill; it is "to make to know,"
"to show, guide, direct." These are activities of the teacher. But are
they necessary for learning, or even related to learning as defined earlier?
"Teaching," says Rogers, "is a vastly over-rated function."
(26)
The function of the teacher is to facilitate learning in the student by
providing the conditions which lead to meaningful or significant self-directed
learning. The objective is to develop a group, including the teacher, into a
community of learners. In such a community, curiosity is freed, the sense of
inquiry is opened up, everything is open to questioning and exploration.
"Out of such a context arise true students, real learners, creative
scientists and scholars and practitioners, the kind of individuals who can live
in a delicate but everchanging balance between what is presently known and the
flowing, moving, altering problems and facts of the future. (27) Such a
community facilitates learning, or learning how to learn.
How can we achieve such a community of learners? We now have considerable
knowledge about how to do so, about how to stimulate self-initiated, significant
learning by the whole person. There are three major conditions, or qualities or
attitudes, which, when present in an interpersonal relationship, facilitate
such learning. These conditions were first identified and demonstrated to be
effective in counseling or psychotherapy; there is now evidence that they apply
to classroom learning as well as learning in psychotherapy.
Realness is the facilitator of learning.
Learning is facilitated when the teacher is not playing a role prescribed by
the educational system but rather is himself or herself, genuine, authentic,
honest. Relationships with students are direct personal encounters; the teacher
is a real person, with no professional facade. He doesn't feel one thing and
say something else; he doesn't conceal his feelings, either positive or
negative. But in expressing his feelings he accepts them as his own, without
projecting blame for his negative feelings onto the students. If he is
irritated, he says "I feel irritated," not "You irritate
me." He can be bored as well as enthusiastic. "He can like or dislike
a student product without implying that it is objectively good or bad or that
the student is good or bad. He is simply expressing a feeling for the product,
a feeling which exists within himself. Thus he is a person to his students, not
a faceless embodiment of a curricular requirement nor a sterile tube through
which knowledge is passed from one generation to the next." (28)
A sixth-grade teacher who changed from the traditional teacher-dominated method
to one which gave her students considerable responsible freedom found that she
couldn't live with the mess which they made during the art period, though it
didn't bother the students. She expressed her feelings: "One day I told
the children . . . that I am a neat and orderly person by nature and that the
mess was driving me to distraction. Did they have a solution? It was suggested
there were some volunteers who could clean up. . . . I said it didn't seem fair
to have the same people clean up all the time for others-but it would solve it
for me. 'Well, some people like to clean,' they replied. So that's the way it
is." (29)
It is not easy to be real in this sense, without evaluating, judging, or
blaming others. Note that the teacher above did not say: "You are the
messiest children I have ever seen. . . . You are just terrible." They may
not have been excessively messy; they may have been excited and absorbed in
their art work. It was the teacher who felt they were messy. Being real is not a
license to judge and condemn others, to project one's feelings on others, to
take out one's own anger and frustrations on one's students. Nor is using the
"right" words or verbal formula being genuine if there is a
judgmental attitude behind them. "Only slowly can we learn to be truly
real. For first of all, one must be close to one's feelings, capable of being
aware of them. Then one must be willing to take the risk of sharing them as
they are, inside, not disguising them as judgments, or attributing them to
other people." (30)
Prizing, acceptance, trust. If
one is not to express judgments and evaluations, one must not be judgmental in
one's attitudes. This is related to the second attitude which facilitates
learning. The learner is accepted as a person of worth, a unique individual,
and is respected; his or her feelings, opinions, and person are prized. The
learner is seen as trustworthy. There is a caring for him or her. And all this
is unconditional; there is no demand that the learner be different or conform
in some way to be accepted and respected. Fears as well as satisfactions,
apathy as well as enthusiasm, anger and resistance as well as pleasantness and
cooperation, are all accepted as aspects of an imperfect human being.
Underlying this attitude is a trust in the human organism, its capacity for
developing its potential, choosing its own directions, given the opportunity.
It is a confidence that the direction of change and learning will be toward the
fulfillment or actualization of the person's potentialities, toward growth and
development.
Empathic understanding. Empathic
understanding is not the usual evaluative understanding based on a diagnostic
analysis from an external point of view. It is understanding which comes from
putting oneself in the place of the student to understand his or her reactions
from the inside, to experience the student's perceptions and feelings about
what is happening.
This attitude of standing in the other's shoes, of viewing the world through
the student's eyes, is almost unheard of in the classroom. One could listen to
thousands of ordinary classroom interactions without coming across one instance
of clearly communicated, sensitively accurate, empathic understanding. But it
has tremendous releasing effects when it occurs. (31)
Rogers goes on to suggest that if a teacher were able to ma ce even one
nonjudgmental empathic response to a student's expressed feeling each day, he
or she would discover the power of such understanding.
The
Student's Contribution to Learning
If the teaching-learning process is a
relationship or an encounter between a facilitator and a learner, then the
learner must be a participant in the process. There are three conditions
involving the learner which are necessary for learning to occur.
Perception of the facilitative conditions. If realness, prizing,
and acceptance and empathic understanding are to be effective in facilitating
learning, they must be perceived or felt by the student. Students, because of
their previous experience, may at first think that the genuineness or realness
of the teacher is a new kind of phoniness whose purpose is to manipulate them.
But students overcome this disbelief when the teacher is in fact not pretending
or trying a new role, and recognize the realness and humanness of the teacher.
Awareness of a problem. Real learning
occurs in response to a situation perceived by the student as a problem.
Otherwise there is little if any stimulation to learn or to change. This is
essentially the problem of relevance. It requires that if real learning is to
be facilitated, education must present students with situations they perceive
as real, as relevant, meaningful problems and issues regarding their existence
which they must resolve.
Motivation. Conceivably, problems
can be ignored, avoided, or resisted. But there is a natural motivation for
learning in all normal individuals. This motivation is the tendency to
fulfillment or toward self-actualization. When faced with a problem, or an
obstacle to self-actualization, the natural tendency of the individual is to
face it, work on it, and attempt to solve it. Unfortunately, this natural
motivation to learn is often suppressed rather than supported in our current
educational system .(32) The school and the classroom are highly threatening to
many students, and this threat inhibits the natural motivation to learn. The
presence of facilitative conditions in the teacher minimizes threat and thus
allows the motivation to learn to manifest itself.
When a facilitator creates, even to a modest degree, a classroom climate
characterized by all that he can achieve of realness, prizing, and empathy;
when he trusts the constructive tendency of the individual and the group; then
he discovers that be has inaugurated an educational revolution. Learning of a
different quality, proceeding at a different pace, with a greater degree of
pervasiveness, occurs. Feelings--positive, negative, confused-become a part of
the classroom experience. Learning becomes life, and a very vital life at that.
The student is on his way, sometimes excitedly, sometimes reluctantly, to
becoming a learning, changing, being. (33)
Implementing
the Conditions (34)
The conditions for facilitating learning are attitudes, not
techniques. Teachers may ask, however, just how they are to be real, to
manifest their prizing and respect, and to express their empathic
understanding. Some suggestions follow:
Being real. Being real does not mean
simply venting all one's negative feelings on students nor does it mean
uninhibited expression of feelings or behaviors such as directing, bossing,
controlling, punishing, and disciplining. There is no place for the impatient,
easily irritated, emotionally disturbed teacher in the classroom; nor is an
authoritarian personality a facilitative teacher. The attitudes being expressed
in being real must be attitudes of respect, warmth, caring, liking, and
understanding.
The expression or explosion of pent-up irritations or accumulated negative
feelings can be harmful to children. The teacher must be aware of such feelings
and deal with them before they reach this stage. A student of the author
reports an experience in student teaching in which she learned this:
Last semester I went through a traumatic and distressing time, in connection
with my student teaching. I had been given advice by teachers on bow to conduct
a good classroom. I was told not to smile too much, to establish my authority
at the outset, and never to show my emotions, because the students would then
know they could "get my goat." For six weeks I labored to follow this
advice, because it came from supposed experts. One day I became so angry at the
noise in the classroom that I burst out in an emotional attack on the students,
screaming at them for their terrible behavior. The students were startled; they
felt that I had been unfair. If I had been more real in this situation I would
have been able to tell the students that I got annoyed at the noise much
earlier, and we could have worked out some sort of compromise on the noise
level. This realness could have avoided my personal attack on them as bad
persons. It could also have helped me avoid my tremendous feelings of guilt;
for even though my cooperating teacher felt that the students got what they
deserved, I knew that I had been most unfair. In the future, when in the
teaching situation, I will try my personal best to be real, to express my
feelings as they occur in my awareness.
Being real means that teachers do not pretend that they know everything or have
all the answers, or are perfect. Again, a student of the writer expresses this
nicely:
If I am real, my students will be able to relate to me as I am-a human being
with feelings and ideas, not an authority figure who issues mandates from
above. They will realize that I am being my whole "self," and that I
can and do make mistakes; furthermore, when I make mistakes, I will be able to
admit them. It is only human to make mistakes, but very few teachers are
accustomed to letting their students know that they are less than infallible.
In my opinion, students would feel more at ease with a teacher who is able to
admit errors, and who relinquishes his role of all-knowing authority. The
teacher would also become a learner in the eyes of the student if be were able
to admit that his ideas are not always absolutely correct.
Genuineness or realness is not a method or technique, something outside
oneself, but a manifestation or expression of oneself as a person. A teacher
who is real is thus not preoccupied with following a method or technique.
Manifesting prizing, trust, and
respect. Prizing or respecting another is a
positive thing; it is not simply a grudging acceptance. It is more than the
gushing "I love all children." It is probably not possible for a
teacher to like all children, or like them equally well. Prizing or respect
does not require that the teacher like or accept all a student's
characteristics or behaviors; the teacher prizes the student as a person worthy
of respect. And it is also true that when one is really able to understand
another, one almost always finds some basis for liking and respecting the other
as a person. But if a teacher cannot feel some respect and liking for a student
as a human being, then it is better that the child be placed with a teacher who
can. Prizing or respect is manifested in certain behaviors in a teacher:
1. Listening. Studies of teaching have found that teachers in the classroom
talk on the average about 75 percent of the time. Even when they are not
talking, and students are talking, teachers often are not really listening, in
the sense that they are really trying to understand and are interested in what
the students are saying and why. Usually they are evaluating a student's answer
to a question: Is it right or wrong?
Real listening to another is not evaluative, nor is it selective in terms of
whether the other is sticking to the point, being relevant to the question, or
logical. It involves attending to everything the other person says, and being
interested in the other's thoughts, ideas, and feelings, recognizing them as
worthy of being expressed and heard rather than rejecting or putting them down
as inadequate, wrong, or poorly thought out or expressed. To facilitate real
learning, the student must feel free to express ideas and feelings without
being negatively evaluated, criticized, or condemned for having them, even if
they are negative. Such listening shows respect and prizing of
the student.
2. Responding. In responding to a
student the teacher communicates that she or he has been attending to what the
student has been saying, that the student has been beard and hopefully, to some
extent at least, understood. Such responses may be simply "yes,"
"I see," "I understand," "uh-uh." A simple
restatement of what was said also indicates that the teacher has heard
accurately. If the teacher does not understand, the response indicates this:
"I don't understand," "I'm not sure I follow you,"
"Can you say that again," "I'm not sure I know what you
mean," "Are you saying . . . ?" This can lead to clarification
by the student. The student's feelings or thinking may be confused, and such
responses help the student to try to communicate what is being expressed
clearly. Ignoring a student who does not give the right answer or who is not clear
or not understood bappens all too frequently and does not convey respect. The
teacher should not pretend to understand when he or she does not.
Understanding empathically. In
addition to the manifestation of respect for the student, listening and responding
to the student are the basis for empathic understanding and the communication
of that understanding. Empathic listening involves putting oneself in the place
of the other and trying to see things as the other sees them. If the teacher
does this in regard to the student giving a wrong answer to a question, the
teacher can often see and understand what leads the student to give such an
answer, and is thus able to help the student understand the question. Empathic
understanding goes beyond the cognitive aspects of what the student is saying.
It also includes the affective or feeling aspects, which must be recognized and
responded to if significant learning is to occur.
Facilitative teaching involves a personal relationship which includes mutual
genuineness, respect and trust, and understanding. It is at its best a
spontaneous personal encounter. It may involve disagreement, conflicts, or
controversies which are resolved in a confrontation. Differences may not be
resolved, but they are recognized, faced, and accepted. When the facilitative
conditions are present the relationship is one which is free from the threat
which inhibits exploration and learning.
Methods
of Building Freedom
In addition to being concerned about implementing or manifesting the
facilitative conditions, teachers will be interested in ways in which they can
provide opportunities for self-reliant learning in the classroom. As in the
case of implementing the attitudes, these methods of building freedom will be related
to the style of the teacher, and many will be personal and in a sense unique.
There are a number of approaches or methods, however, which Rogers indicates
have been used successfully by teachers:
Building upon problems
perceived as real. In education, as in our
culture, we seem to attempt to insulate students from real problems in life.
But "it appears that if we desire to have students learn to be free and
responsible individuals, then we must be willing for them to confront life, to
face real problems. . . . Some real confrontation by a problem seems a
necessary condition for this type of learning." (35)
Real problems derive from students, and the teacher must be sensitive to and
willing to respond to and nourish those problems or issues which relate to the
course or subject being taught. Because of the insulation of students from
problems, it may be necessary for the teacher to confront them with situations
which will pose real problems. Some of the following approaches are designed to
do this.
Providing resources. In
counseling or psychotherapy the resources are within the person; the therapist
does not supply them. In education there are many resources which the teacher
can provide for students without forcing them upon the students. The
facilitative teacher, instead of spending most of the time organizing lesson
plans and lectures, devotes it to discovering, obtaining, and making easily
available the kinds of resources relevant to the needs of students. Resources
include not only books, articles, laboratory equipment, tools, maps, films,
recordings, and so on, but also human resources-persons who can contribute
knowledge. The teacher, of course, is perhaps the most important resource, but
his or her knowledge and experience is not forced upon students in lectures,
but is offered and made available when students need and want it. "If we
spent the same amount of time that is now spent on planning for prescribed
curricula, lectures, and examinations on the imaginative provision of resources
for learning, we would come up with all kinds of new ways of surrounding the
student with a learning environment from which he could choose those elements
which best met his needs." (36) Lectures or expositions of subject matter
by the teacher are not, then, a necessary part of education, imposed upon all
students, but may be a part of education when desired by students.
Use of contracts. Student
contracts can give security to students as well as placing responsibility upon
them. They provide a transitional experience between the requirements of a
program or educational institution and complete freedom of the student. A
student who for whatever reason (lack of interest in a required course, for
example) wants only a passing grade in a course may make a contractual agreement
with the teacher about just what he or she will do-perhaps reading certain
material and taking an examination on it. A student who wants a higher grade
may also propose a course of study, and when this is agreed upon with the
instructor it also becomes a contract. Students know that if they perform their
part they will receive the agreed-upon grades. Class discussions can become
freer-students aren't worried about the effects on their grades of disagreeing
with the instructor.
Division of the class. Freedom
should not be imposed on those who do not want it, Thus, provision should be
made for those who desire the alternative of conventional instruction; students
should be free to learn passively as well as to initiate their own learning,
Programmed learning provides another alternative.
Self-initiated learning also is perhaps more productive in small groups. Large
classes can be divided in various ways, and the smaller groups can function in
different ways, with the members assuming various kinds of responsibility.
The conduct of inquiry. The
inquiry method of learning is a participative, experiential process. The
subject (usually it has been science) is not considered as a set of absolute,
already discovered facts. The teacher in inquiry learning poses problems and
serves as a resource to the students in their solution of the problems.
Students thus function as scientists. Whereas traditional educational methods
make children less autonomous, less open, and less empirical as they progress
in their education, inquiry methods lead to independent thinking and openness,
as well as to new, deeper, and more lasting understandings. The inquiry method
can, however, become a technique or routine in a teacher-imposed curriculum.
Simulation as a type of experiential learning. A simulation is a miniature or model representing a real
situations family, a school, a corporation, a legislature, a nation, a world. A
simulation experience requires knowledge of the system and some preparatory
training before engaging in it. The experience has built into it certain
situations, events, or problems, but the process and outcomes are partly
determined by the responses and decisions of the participants. Consequences of
responses and decisions are provided, based upon calculations following
formulas developed for the simulation.
Simulation can provide students with experience with complex real-life
processes involving decisions affected by incomplete or inadequate information,
by difficulties in communication, by misunderstandings, and by interpersonal
relations. The importance of these factors in decision making becomes impressed
upon the student. Students become involved and feel that they learn about
real-life situations. Responsibility for the conduct of the simulation is in
the hands of the students once the teacher introduces it.
Programmed instruction as experiential learning. Programmed instruction may be used to facilitate
self-initiated learning. A student who becomes aware of a gap in information or
knowledge necessary for a problem or project in which he or she is engaged, can
turn to an appropriate unit of programmed instruction to fill the gap. The need
for the information or knowledge is real, and the motivation to acquire it is
present. Students can obtain the material on their own, when they need it, at
their own rate, efficiently and with a positive experience in learning.
Programmed learning cannot be substituted for broader approaches to learning
meanings and patterns of thinking, however.
The basic encounter group. An important new approach to experiential learning is the
basic encounter group, or "sensitivity training." Although widely
used in business and government, the encounter group has not been used
extensively in education. There are many kinds of group experiences being
advocated and practiced, but the basic encounter group is an unstructured
experience in which facilitation helps the group express itself and the members
to interact in such a way as to achieve a meaningful, mutually helpful
experience. The facilitator does this by providing the conditions for
facilitating learning which have been described earlier. Such an experience
leads to the members of the group becoming more accepting, respecting,
understanding, and genuine. (37)
Evaluation
in Meaningful Learning
Significant learning, or personal
learning, is difficult if not impossible to measure and evaluate in terms of
external criteria. Rogers writes:
I believe that the testing of the student's achievements in order to see if he
meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the
implications of therapy for significant learning. In therapy, the examinations
are set by life. The client meets them, sometimes passing, sometimes failing.
He finds that he can use the resources of the therapeutic relationship and his
experience in it to organize himself so that he can meet life's tests more
satisfyingly next time. I see this as a paradigm for education also. (38)
Means of fulfilling the requirements for many life situations would be among
the resources provided by the teacher or counselor in the school. These
requirements include prerequisites for courses and requirements for graduation,
for college entrance, for certain college curriculums, and for employment in
various occupations. Certain scores on objective tests of achievement are
required for some of these and other life situations. These requirements are
set as tickets of entrance. The students would be free to choose whether they
wanted to obtain a given ticket.
Self-initiated learning becomes responsible learning when one evaluates one's
own learning. Goals and criteria are established by the individual, who decides
to what extent be or she has achieved them, Self-evaluation must thus be a part
of experiential learning.
There are various ways to incorporate self-evaluation into learning: mutual
discussion between teacher and student, written evaluations and self-grading,
demonstration of fulfillment of a contract; self-analysis in comparison with
standards or norms or in discussion with other students.
Criteria may vary among students, so equivalent evaluations or grades do not
always mean the same thing, which can constitute a problem in a conventional
educational program or institution. There are other problems also in such
situations, including the influence of competition for grades in a system and
society where grades are so important in indicating educational progress.
Implications
for Teacher Education
A combination of the cognitive and the affective
in education and a focus upon the interpersonal conditions for facilitating
significant learning, require changes in the preparation of teachers. Teacher
education currently emphasizes subject matter and methods of cognitive
learning. A basic question is "Is it possible to develop interpersonal
qualities in teacher-education students?" It has been possible to do this
in counselor education, so it should be possible in teacher edu-cation.
Such a program of preparation would require many capable facilitators of
small-group processes. Task-oriented groups of staff members and students
should be formed to consider the question "How can this school help the
whole person learn?" These groups would not be limited to cognitive
discussion, but would focus upon the whole person. The groups would consist of
volunteers who were willing to become involved experientially as well as
cognitively. They would meet together for three weeks of intensive group
experiences, followed by weekly meetings, and a weekend session three months
later.
Turbulence would be created among staff members, with innovators and
traditionalists opposing each other. But no one would be discharged or punished
for dissent. A probable outcome would be a "free university" type of
teacher-training institution, "in which the students would form their own
curricula, participate in the facilitation of learning, and find other means of
evaluation than grades. And what would this student do as a new teacher in his
own classroom? Most importantly he would simply be the attitudes I have already
described, and because of this fact new participatory methods would emerge
." (39)
Implications
for Administration
The approach to education described above
has implications for the administration of a school or educational system.
Administration would follow what D. M. McGregor calls Theory Y, rather than
what be calls Theory X, or the traditional or conventional view of
administration . (40)
In the conventional management pattern, a school administrator . . . sees his
task as that of harnessing the energy of faculty and students so that the goals
and requirements of the educational system will be met. In the first place he
sees himself as responsible for organizing the available money, equipment, and
people in such a way as to achieve the educational goal which he has in view.
This means that be must motivate and direct his faculty, and through them the
students. It means that one of his main functions is to control the actions and
to modify the behavior of all members of the school in such a way that the
educational goal will be achieved. Central to his policies is the view that
both faculty and students would be, if left to their own devices, apathetic to,
or resistant to, the educational goal. Consequently, they must be rewarded,
punished, persuaded-through use of both the carrot and the stick-so that they
work toward the goal which the administrator, or his board of trustees, or the
state, has defined as "being educated." (41)
The administrator may be "hard" or "soft" (using aversive
control or positive reinforcement), but in either case directs, controls,
manages, and manipulates his or her subordinates, who are considered as
apathetic, not willing or able to take responsibility, and needing to be guided
and led.
This approach to administration has been questioned by research and experience
in the behavioral sciences and industry. McGregor's theory Y exemplifies the
newer approach. This approach rests upon the view of human nature which
underlies the approach to education described above.
In terms of this theory the educational administration is responsible for
organizing the resources of the institution-the teachers, the students, the
funds, the equipment and materials in such a way that all of the persons
involved can work together toward defining and achieving their own educational
goals. The mainspring of the organization is the motivation for development and
learning which is inherent in each person. The task of the administrator is to
so arrange the organizational conditions and methods of operation that people
can best achieve their own goals by also furthering the jointly defined goals
of the institution. (42)
The administration attempts to facilitate the ability of teachers and students
to develop and use their potentials, though removing obstacles (such as red
tape) and creating a climate of valuing, prizing, and trusting. Everyone
participates in the organizational process, sharing initiative, responsibility,
and authority. In-service training would be used to develop facilitative
leaders-persons who could listen, accept, understand, clarify, and
communicate-who could help individuals and groups grow and develop.
A
PLAN FOR SELF-DIRECTED
CHANGES
IN AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
The goal of and approach to classroom
education developed by Rogers would require not only changes in teachers,
administrators, and their preparation, but in the entire educational system,
including parents. "A way must be found to develop a climate in the system
in which the focus is not upon teaching, but on the facilitation of self-directed learning." (43)
The intensive group experience is such a way. As it can be used to change
teacher education, so it can be used to change the educational system. The
intensive group or "workshop" provides an unstructured situation in
which participants have freedom for expression and exploration of personal
feelings and for interpersonal exploration in a safe, nonthreatening atmosphere,
promoted by the facilitator. The group experience is conducted intensively for
periods of three days to two or three weeks. The objective is to bring about
change in the organizational climate and structure in which the members work.
Such groups have been successfully used since 1947 with industry and government
executives and administrators, with professional groups, and more recently
educational groups, including administrators, teachers, and student-teacher
groups, student groups, dropouts, predelinquents and delinquents, and others.
But few attempts have been made to use the intensive group experience to change
a total educational system. Educators who have participated in the group
experiences away from the school have returned to the same system, where their
new attitudes and open behaviors have not been welcomed.
The first step in implementing a plan for change through the group experience
in an educational system would of course be a commitment by the chief
administrator and one or two of his or her associates or school board members.
Then a group experience could be offered on a voluntary basis to board members
and administrators, away from the locality, when school was not in session.
Experienced facilitators from outside would be employed. Costs might be subsidized
by an outside agency or foundation, though participants would pay part of the
cost as evidence of their commitment. Small group experiences would be
supplemented by presentations to the total group in general meetings.
Interpersonal feelings and relationships would be explored; the participants
would get to know each other as they had never done in years of working
together. Concealed negative feelings and antagonisms which had prevented real
cooperation and progress would come to the surface and be resolved with
increased understanding and acceptance. With trust and openness, ideas, ideals,
and proposals would be expressed. The way would be open to plan organizational
and system change. The chief administrator would be more open to innovative
ideas; more person-oriented and acceptant of others; more democratic and able
to utilize the potentials of staff members; more able to communicate clearly
and realistically with superiors, peers, subordinates, and the board.
It is likely that the decision would be made to go ahead with planning for
change, and to involve others in the system. This could include an intensive
group experience for the teachers who wished it. Those who participated would
be more open and able to listen to students, more sensitive to and accepting of
students' feelings and creative ideas, and able to develop better relationships
with them. They would become more humanistic teachers. Innovations developed
from the group experience are more likely to be implemented than those coming
from outside-they are self-chosen and are likely to be supported by their
superiors who have had the group experience.
Students could be involved in a group experience with their teachers-not away
from the school, probably, but with trained facilitators. Not all students in a
large system could be involved, but those who were would be freer to express
their feelings in class, would work with other students and teachers in
cooperative ways, would take responsibility for their own learning, and would
learn more because they would have greater motivation and more energy to devote
to learning.
A school system which goes this far will arouse attention and interest in the
community. Parents will want to be involved, and should be. A group experience
might be offered to PTA officers and chairmen, or to parents of children
involved in a group experience, in the form of a weekend session, 24-hour
marathon, or weekly 3-bour evening sessions.
Finally, in addition to the group experiences for peers or near-peers, vertical
groups could be attempted. On invitation, two each of school board members,
administrators, parents, teachers, highly achieving students, failing students,
and dropouts could form a group. Such a diverse group might have some
difficulty getting started, and a theme such as "What I like and don't
like about our schools and what I would like them to be" might be
suggested. Such groups can develop greater understanding among the various
members and be the source of great change in individuals. In Rogers' words,
"It scarcely has to be added that even a very few such vertical groups
would drastically change the climate and flavor of any educational
system." (44)
The holding of workshops before the academic year and each month during that
year, each involving from one to ten small groups, would involve hundreds of
people in the system and assure lasting effects. But a plan for continuing
change should be built into the system. Opportunity for members of the system,
selected on the basis of attitudes (nondefensiveness, realness, and genuineness
in interpersonal relationships, awareness of and ability to express feelings,
empathy with others, caring and concern for others) manifested in the group
experience, should be given the opportunity for summer training as group facilitators.
During the following year these people would serve as cofacilitators of groups
with outside facilitators, and when ready, would themselves become
facilitators, with outside facilitators serving as consultants. The system then
would have its own facilitators for continuing the process, involving more
members of the system.
The nature of these groups must be emphasized, since there is a negative
reaction to encounter groups, by many who fear they Will be forced to reveal
themselves and will be attacked and criticized by others. It is true that there
are some groups where this does happen, and group leaders who force or
encourage such behaviors. But the groups discussed here are not of that type;
they are built upon the facilitative conditions for learning which have been
discussed earlier.45 All participation would be voluntary.
The resulting process of change might not be smooth; constructive turbulence
occurs in the process of significant or rapid change. Elements of the community
might be threatened and resist any change Of the traditional method of
education; such persons would not be likely to become involved in the intensive
group experience, and thus could not be reached or changed. Yet if change is to
occur, it must be attempted, even though it is difficult and will be opposed by
some. The process would be subjected to evaluation and assessment by those in
the system and by outside professional observers and evaluators. More rigorous
research programs could also be developed.
Self-Directed
Educational Change in Action
The plan summarized above was tried in two
school systems, one private and one public.
A private school system. The private system consisted of
Immaculate Heart College (which included teacher education), 8 high schools,
and 50 elementary schools in Los Angeles. Financial support was provided by
private foundations and individuals,
The top administrators and many other leaders were enthusiastic about the plan.
Forty-five administrators and College faculty members and thirty-six
administrators and faculty from three high schools met for two weekends in
encounter sessions in small groups. One-hundred-and-eighty teachers and
administrators from twenty-two elementary schools met in small groups for two
weekends over a period of time. Forty student leaders from a high school met in
three groups for one weekend, and for a second weekend a month later with
faculty, who at first were reluctant to meet in small groups with students.
Groups were facilitated by members of the staff of the Center for the Study of
the Person; staff members also met with faculty on innovation in education and
later on the encounter group program, discussing questions and criticisms.
Staff members also participated in an assembly with the college students, which
was also attended by a number of faculty members. Later, the administrative
council of the college was helped to plan task-oriented groups. Workshops for
teachers and principals of the elementary schools were held, some of which were
disappointing and some highly successful.
Although there was some criticism of some of the facilitators and groups (too
"pushy," too personal), the reactions of the faculty were generally
positive, with faculty who were not involved in the first groups attending
later groups. Interest in encounter groups for faculty and students within
departments developed. Communication and relationships among faculty improved,
and faculty meetings improved. After the first series of groups, others were
conducted at the request of groups in the system. Faculty members instituted
changes in their classroom teaching and relationships with students. The
atmosphere of the schools changed.
Over the three-year period of the program other changes occurred. The
administrative structure was changed to involve more participation, more
student participation in both class and out-of-class functions was encouraged,
with more faculty-student interaction and cooperation. After the experimental
period ended, changes continued. Teacher education methods were changed to
include more contact of the students with schools and classrooms. Several
people from the system obtained training as facilitators so encounter groups
could continue.
Project transition. In 1970 a similar
program was initiated in the Louisville, Kentucky school system, with support
from the U.S. Office of Education (which had declined to support the earlier
program). Almost 60 percent of the more than 60,000 children in the district
were black; over one-third were below poverty level or receiving welfare. Most
of the poor and the black were in inner-city schools. The district had the
highest number of underachievers, the highest dropout rate, the most
delinquency, the highest student and teacher turnover, the highest
unemployment, and the highest segregation in housing of any district in
Kentucky. The project was supported by the three white and two black members of
the school board and by the new superintendent (who had had encounter group
experience).
There were three components of the project. One was an organizational
development program throughout the system involving a series of weekend
encounter groups (on paid time) for administrators, teachers, trustees, and
some parents. The encounter groups for administrators were followed by
communication laboratories and human potential seminars, and training sessions
for administrators in group dynamics, conflict management, team building and
interpersonal skills. Over 1,600 school personnel were involved over a
six-month period. The objective was to improve communication and participation
in policy and program decisions in the system. The second component involved
the teaching staff in proposing and developing programs directed at reaching
the student population through more humanistic teaching, through more relevant
curriculums, through differentiated staffing patterns, and through more
flexible educational structuring. Team teaching, teacher corp interns, and
parent volunteers were involved. The third component consisted of the decentralization
of administration, with the development of neighborhood school boards which
became involved in the development of school philosophy, curriculum selection,
teacher selection, and teacher evaluation.
The project led to much ferment and turmoil, at the upper administration level
and in individual schools. But positive results occurred, including greater
interest of parents and students, with resulting lowering of dropouts and gains
in student academic achievement. The continuing or long-term effects of the
project have been lost or obscured by the turmoil following a court order for
desegregation in the Louisville schools, which includes merging of the
Louisville city schools with suburban schools in Jefferson County.
Summary
The necessity of adapting to a world characterized by rapid change
and by tensions between groups and nations poses a crisis in education. The goal of education must be the
development of persons who can adapt and change, who know how to learn. Such a person
is the fully functioning person described earlier, Education must go beyond
concern with knowledge and cognitive development; it must include the whole
person and must promote affective development, personal growth, and creativity.
The focus must be upon significant learning, which is personally meaningful
learning rather than meaningless learning like the enforced acquisition and
memorization of information and facts. Traditional learning has involved the
latter, which has been the focus of research in learning and instruction. To
promote the second kind of learning is the focus of, what is designated by many
as humanistic education and requires a revolution in education. It does not
reject cognitive learning, but combines it with the affective, recognizing that
they cannot be separated.
Learning-significant learning-is a natural characteristic of the organism in
its inherent tendency to maintain and enhance itself, to develop and utilize
its potentialities. Such learning occurs when the subject matter is perceived
as being relevant to this basic motivating tendency. But change, particularly
change in the self-organization, is threatening, and tends to be resisted.
However, such learning is more likely to occur when external pressures or
threat are at a minimumwhen the environment is accepting, understanding, and
supportive. When threat to the self or self-concept is minimized, learning is
promoted, since experiences can be accurately perceived in a differentiated
manner and can be explored, analyzed, taken apart, and reintegrated in a
meaningful manner.
Learning is facilitated by the student's experiential involvement with
practical and real (relevant) problems, with the student participating actively
and responsibly in the learning process. This is selfinitiated learning,
involving the whole person of the learner. Self-initiated learning, together
with self-evaluation and self-criticism, leads to independence, self-reliance,
and creativity, and to learning how to learn.
If significant learning is self-initiated, self-discovered, self-appropriated,
and personally meaningful, questions arise about the nature and usefulness of
teaching. Teaching, says Rogers, is vastly overrated; little if anything of a
consequential nature can be taught. Rather than being an instructor, the
teacher's function is to facilitate learning. The teacher does this by
providing the conditions under which significant learning occurs. There are
three major conditions which do this: realness, congruence, or genuineness in
the teacher; a prizing, acceptance, and trust of the student; and an empathic
understanding of the student.
If these conditions are to be effective, they must be communicated to and
perceived by the student. The student must also be in a state of readiness to
learn, which involves motivation. Unless something has happened to inhibit or
destroy the student's natural drive toward the maintenance and enhancement of
the self, motivation is present and is aroused in response to a situation
presenting a real problem, something that is perceived by the student as
relevant to his or her development. The presence of the facilitative conditions
minimizes the threat which may exist in any new problem situation, allowing the
motivation to learn to function.
These facilitative conditions are attitudes of the teacher rather than
techniques or methods as such, divorced from the person of the teacher. They
are, however, manifested in and communicated to the student in behaviors.
Behaviors which implement the conditions include openness and honesty and
admission of lack of knowledge and of mistakes. They include showing respect
for students by listening to them to understand how they feel and how they see
things, and by responding to communicate this understanding. Teaching becomes a
personal rela-tionship, a spontaneous personal encounter which frees the
student to learn.
The teacher contributes to the student's freedom to learn by recognizing and
centering education upon problems that are real to students.
The teacher also provides as many resources as possible, including his or her
own knowledge. Programmed instruction, small group methods, inquiry learning,
and simulation may be used. The teacher allows students to select their own
objectives and set their own levels of achievement, which may involve the use
of contracts.
Evaluation of significant learning poses a problem in our present educational
settings. Personal learning is difficult if not impossible to evaluate by
external criteria of the kind usually available. If the individual sets her or
his own goals and criteria, self-evaluation is the most appropriate form of
evaluation. Beyond this there is evaluation in terms of the requirements of
life situations, some of which can be provided by educators as part of the
resources made available to students. In addition to the facilitation of
cognitive learning, there are other
outcomes of this approach to teaching and learning. Students enjoy learning,
and motivation is not a problem. Students take responsibility for their
learning. They work harder and longer at their self-imposed tasks. They work
together; there is cooperation rather than competition, sharing rather than
hoarding of information. Students develop positive self-regard and positive
self-concepts; they have confidence in their ability to learn. They develop
positive regard and respect for others and the contributions of others.
Creativity is manifested in the learning process. Students grow as persons. In
short, they become more fully functioning persons.
This approach to education has implications for teacher education and for
administration. Teachers must be prepared to function as facilitators of
learning, and administrators must accept this approach to teaching and support
it. Further, the educational system (and with it the community) must undergo
changes, so that a climate for self-directed learning exists. The intensive
small-group experience is a method for system change which has now been used in
enough situations to warrant its introduction into any system where there is a
desire to change on the part of top administrators and school boards.
EVALUATION
Origin
and Development
The approach to education presented by
Rogers is derived from his experience and research in counseling or
psychotherapy, mainly with young adult and older clients. This experience and
research has led to the recognition, definition, and measurement of the basic
or essential conditions for positive personality or behavior changes. These conditions
are certain characteristics of personal or interpersonal relationships.
If these conditions lead to changes in personality and behavior in
psychologically or emotionally disturbed persons in counseling or
psychotherapy, then the question presents itself, would they not also lead to
changes in so-called "normal" persons, including children in
educational settings? The relevance of this question is increased by the
evidence of research that the kinds of clients, problems, and personality characteristics
and behaviors which are affected by the conditions have been shown to be very
extensive in kind or variety. Not only do the conditions lead to emotional or
affective changes, but to cognitive or intellectual changes. Truax and Carkhuff
summarize this as follows:
The person (whether a counselor, therapist or teacher) who is better able to
communicate warmth, genuineness and accurate empathy is more effective in
interpersonal relationships no matter what the goal of the interaction (better
grades for college students, better interpersonal relations for the counseling
center out-patients, adequate personality functioning and integration for the
seriously disturbed mental patient, socially acceptable behavior for the
juvenile delinquent, or greater reading ability for the third grade reading
instruction student). (46)
The evidence for cognitive changes in children following classes taught by
teachers who are empathic, respecting, and real in their relationships with
students will be presented later. Here it can be stated that the concern of
those who fear that such an approach to education will neglect cognitive
development is unfounded. Attention to and concern with the student as a
person, a feeling person, fosters intellectual development as well as affective
development.
The recognition of the importance of the personal relationship in learning is,
of course, not a discovery unique with Rogers. Not only have the great and good
teachers of all times manifested this in their teaching; it has been recognized
by educators beginning at least with the early Greeks and continuing through
Erasmus, Comenius, Locke, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Montessori. 47
As Rogers notes, his experience was a
rediscovery of effective principles which have been discovered over and over by
competent teachers, and of principles which have been stated by others,
including Dewey and Kilpatrick . (48) That experience in a different area, that
is, counseling or psychotherapy, has led to the discovery of the same
principles and is corroboration of their significance, makes it irrelevant and
unjustified to criticize Rogers because be "has not thought it necessary
to be a student of education before advocating a revolution " (49) and to
belittle his contribution because Rousseau and Dewey wrote about meaningful
learning.
Rogers
and Humanistic Education
Rogers identifies himself with the
movement known as humanistic psychology, being one of the founders of the
American Association for Humanistic Psychology. Yet he does not use the term
humanistic to designate his approach to education. In fact, he has no specific
designation for it. Perhaps he is reluctant to use a label, remembering the
difficulties and even misunderstandings associated with the terms nondirective
counseling and client-centered therapy which he used successively
(1942 and 1951) to designate his approach to counseling or psychotherapy-
Yet the term humanistic education is
being widely used to refer to a concept or philosophy of education which is
essentially that developed by Rogers. Unfortunately, however, many if not most
of those who have written about humanistic education are unfamiliar with his
work. Their writings lack an explicitly developed philosophical and
psychological foundation and are thus unsystematic and fragmentary. Most of the
attention and concern is devoted to techniques, rather than to principles and
attitudes. Rogers' work provides the systematic foundation upon which
humanistic education must be based. (50)
There are, however, some aspects of humanistic education which Rogers does not
develop. Humanistic education may be conceived of as including two major
aspects: (1) the general psychological conditions for all learning, and (2)
affective education, or concern with the affective development of the student
as well as the student's cognitive development. Rogers has focused upon the
first. The general psychological conditions do apply to affective development
as well as cognitive development; there are, however, additional aspects of
affective development or affective education.
In providing the conditions of empathic understanding, acceptance, prizing or
respect, and realness or genuineness, the teacher is fostering affective
learning, or changes in personality, attitudes, and values. The teacher is
doing this by example, or, to use the technical term, by modeling. Students who
are exposed to a teacher who manifests these characteristics develop them in
themselves or in their relations with others. Modeling is a highly effective
method for teaching complex behaviors. Children learn from what the teacher
does more than from what the teacher says. if the teacher is not the kind of
person he or she is trying to teach students to be, be or she cannot
successfully teach this, even though students may be told, "Do as I say,
not as I do." This is a very important principle, since no matter how much
the schools may claim that they do not teach attitudes and values, they cannot
avoid doing so. It therefore is necessary that we be aware of what attitudes
and values are actually being taught and decide if they are those that we want
to teach or think should be taught.
Although indirect teaching through modeling is a powerful method and usually
supersedes what is taught directly if there is inconsistency, direct or
didactic teaching contributes to the efficiency of instruction. It helps to be
able to put into words, in the form of principles, what is being modeled. The
affective aspects of development, or humanization or human relations, can be
taught in part through instruction. This can be done through the standard
curriculum." The course of study referred to earlier in the section on
Bruner, called "Man: A Course of Study," is a deliberate attempt to
do this.
Recently there have been many attempts to develop specific methods or
curriculums in affective education. These approaches can be subject to a number
of criticisms. One is that they are often forced into a standard curriculum
format, complete with lesson plans and teacher manuals. They thus become
subject-matter-oriented rather than person-oriented. Related to this is another
difficulty: The structuring of affective experiences may become a matter of
techniques, with neglect of the attitudes, which are basic. Simulations, games,
exercises, and such can be useful, but they can also lead to unnatural,
controlled, contrived experiences, rather than natural, spontaneous, real
experiences. The development of commercial materials and expensive kits can
foster this unnatural, technique-oriented approach. The emphasis upon
structured, teacher-controlled techniques with predetermined specific
objectives is inconsistent with the goals of affective education, which include
spontaneity, student-initiated activity, open, free discussion and interaction
in a natural setting, and self-directed exploration and learning. Even the
current emphasis on social or interpersonal skills can result in neglect of the
attitudes of respect, acceptance, and a desire to understand others, which are
basic to good interpersonal relationships.
In addition to modeling and didactic instruction, there is a third approach to
affective education. This is the experiential approach. Experiential learning
is particularly relevant in affective education, which involves human or
interpersonal relations. We learn to live with others most effectively by
living with others. it is here that the basic encounter-group approach
developed by Rogers is relevant. Not only is it useful educating teachers and
changing educational systems; it is perhaps the most important and effective
approach to educating children in interpersonal relations. Small-group
experiences should be a continuing part of the educational experience. Actual
experience in groups seems so clearly superior to any other method of learning
in human relations that it is difficult to understand why it has not been
widely used in human relations education in the school. It has been widely
used outside the school with adults.
A student sitting in a classroom with 30 other students, being psychologically
alone, not really knowing the other students, not interacting with or relating
to them, while listening to a teacher talk about "mental hygiene" or
"human relations," is not undergoing a real learning experience. Nor
is being in a classroom and going through a structured series of games or
exercises the rmost effective way of learning to relate to others. In a small
encounter group of six to ten students with a trained facilitator, without
assigned subject matter or an agenda other than to talk about themselves or
whatever is of concern to them, students can learn through experience to:
listen to others
accept and respect others understand others
identify and become aware of their feelings express their feelings explore
their feelings become aware of the feelings of others experience being accepted
and understood by others develop greater awareness of themselves recognize
basic commonalities in human experience change themselves in the direction of
being more the selves they want to be
help others accept themselves
help others understand themselves and each other.
In such groups, learning occurs without the input of external content, in a
natural setting, through experience. The teacher, while an expert in
interpersonal relations, is a facilitator, teaching through modeling rather
than didactically through providing content or subject matter. A cognitive
understanding of the group experiences can be developed through analysis in
discussion of the experience and through didactic teaching of the principles of
human relations, as suggested earlier.
Research
Support
There is now extensive research support for the effectiveness of the
three conditions for facilitating positive personality change in individual and
group counseling or psychotherapy. Support for the effectiveness of the
conditions in classroom teaching is accumulating.
An early study of Emmerling. (52) indicates that teachers who differ in their
orientation toward teaching and students are perceived differently by students.
One group of high school teachers saw the problems of teaching as helping
children think for themselves and be independent, getting students to
participate, learning new ways of helping students develop their maximum
potential, and helping students express individual needs and interests. A
second group, on the other hand, saw the urgent problems as trying to teach
children who don't even have the ability to follow directions, teaching
children who lack a desire to learn or who are not able to do the work required
for their grade, and getting children to listen. Students saw teachers in the
first groups as more real, more acceptant, more empathic than they saw teachers
in the second group.
In a study by Bills, (53) four teachers rated adequate and effective by their
superiors and four rated inadequate were compared. The more adequate teachers
were rated by their students as more real, more empathic, and as having a
higher level of regard for their students than the teachers rated as inadequate.
These two studies used the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory, first
developed to measure clients' perception of empathy, level of positive regard,
unconditional positive regard, and genuineness in tl-ieir counselors or
therapists, and then adapted to measure students' perceptions of these
attitudes or conditions in teachers. in a study by Lewis, Lovell, and Jesse
(54) an adaptation of another instrument which had been developed for use with
clients was used (Teacher-Pupil Relationship Inventory). Sixth-grade students
of teachers who were rated high (by students) showed significantly greater
gains over the school year on the Iowa Tests of Educational Development than
did the students of teachers rated low. For a group of ninth-grade students the
difference in gains was greater for the students of high-rated teachers, but
not significantly so, but the teachers (English teachers) had the students in
only one class, while the sixth-grade teachers had the same students for the
entire day.
A study by Macdonald and Zaret (55) analyzed recorded interactions of nine
teachers and their students. The behaviors of teachers which were classified as
"open"--clarifying, stimulating, accepting, facilitating -were
followed by student responses which were classified as "productive"--discovering,
exploring, experimenting, synthesizing. But when teacher behaviors were
"closed"-judging, directing, reproving, ignoring, probing-student
behaviors were "reproductive"-parroting, guessing, acquiescing, reproducing
facts, remembering.
A number of studies have involved the use of rating scales of the teachers'
empathic understanding, respect or positive regard, and genuineness or
congruence. Aspy56 used the Carkhuff scales of these attitudes or conditions to
rate tape recordings of teachers' interactions with third-grade students in
reading instruction groups. Ratings were obtained for two one-week periods, two
months apart. The students of teachers of three classes who were rated high on
these scales showed a significantly greater gain on the Stanford Reading
Achievement Test than the students of teachers of three classes who rated low
on these conditions. In a further study, Aspy and Hadlock (57) found that
thirdto fifth-grade students taught by teachers rated high in genuineness, respect,
and empathy showed a reading gain of 2.5 years during a five month period,
compared to a gain of 0.7 years by students of teachers rated low on the
conditions. Carkhuff and Berenson, reviewing these and other studies state:
When we look at the data, we find that high-level functioning teachers elicit
as much as two-and-one-half years of intellectual or achievement growth in the
course of a school year, while teachers at low levels of facilitative
conditions may allow only six months of intellectual growth over the course of
a year: students may be facilitated or they may be retarded in their
intellectual as well as emotional growth, and these changes can be accounted
for by the level of the teacher's functioning on the facilitative dimensions
and independent of his knowledgeability, (58)
Summary
Rogers has extrapolated from his
experience and research in counseling or psychotherapy and proposed an approach
to education which focuses on teaching as a facilitative interpersonal
relationship, in which the facilitator is characterized by three basic
attitudes or conditions: empathic understanding; respect, positive regard,
prizing, or trust; and realness, genuineness, or congruence. In doing so be has
provided a systematic psychological foundation for what is becoming known as
humanistic education.
Humanistic education does not neglect or minimize cognitive or intellectual
development. The facilitative conditions promote such development, as well as
fostering affective or emotional growth, which is considered an important
aspect of education. Affective development centers upon interpersonal
relationships. Such development can be fostered through aspects of the regular
curriculum, through didactic teaching of human relations, and especially
through experiential learning in basic encounter groups.
Research studies have supported the effectiveness of the facilitative
conditions in counseling or psychotherapy. Similar research is now accumulating
to support their effectiveness in classroom teaching.
Education of the future is described by Rogers as follows:
Education will not be a preparation for living. It will be, in
itself, an experience in living. Feelings of inadequacy, batred, a desire for
power, feelings of love and awe and respect, feelings of fear, dread,
unhappiness with parents or with other children-all these will be an open part
of [the student's] curriculum, as worthy of exploration as history or
mathematics. In fact this openness to feelings will enable him to learn content
materials more readily. His will be an education in becoming a whole being, and
the learning will involve him deeply, openly, exploringly, in an awareness of
his relationships to the world of others, as well as an awareness of the world
of abstract knowledge. (59)
SUMMARY
Carl R. Rogers, who has devoted his
lifetime to practice and research in counseling or psychotherapy, has developed
an approach to education derived from this experience and research. This
approach is based upon a positive conception of the nature of man. Human
beings, as they are experienced in Rogers' client-centered therapy, are
basically rational, socialized, forward-moving, and realistic. They are active
and proactive, in addition to being reactive to stimuli in their environments.
They are basically cooperative, constructive, and trustworthy. Antisocial
emotions-jealousy, hostility, competitiveness-do exist but they are defensive
reactions to threat and the frustration of more basic impulses for love,
belonging, and security.
These positive capacities and tendencies are aspects of the single basic
motivation toward the actualization of the individual's potentials, or toward
self-actualization. The drive toward self-actualization is not simply an unfolding
from the inside, automatic and without regard to the environment. Rather it
requires certain conditions if it is to manifest itself and lead to the
development of a self-actualizing or fully functioning person. These conditions
are certain basic attitudes manifested by other human beings in their
relationships with the individual. Three major attitudes or conditions have
been identified and defined, and scales for their measurement have been
developed on the basis of experience and research in counseling or
psychotherapy. They are empathic understanding; respect, trust, or positive
regard; and genuineness, congruence, or realness.
Self-actualizing or fully functioning people have a number of characteristics
which can be described, although they integrate in a unitary organization with
the person: (1) These people are open to all their experiences, since they are
free from defensiveness. (2) They live in an existential mode, experiencing
each moment of life anew. They are flexible and adaptable, changing with new
experiences over time. (3) Their organisms are trustworthy guides to satisfying
behavior, since, being open to all their experiences, these people incorporate
all relevant data in their behavior. If any data are missing, openness to
corrective feedback leads to modification of behavior and toward greater
satisfaction of the need for self-actualization.
If one is fully functioning, one's locus of evaluation is internal, rather than
external, though one will of course be influenced by external factors. One's
values are one's own, but are not necessarily idiosyncratic or unique, since
one shares the basic motivation and need of the species. Among the common
values (which contribute to the survival of the species as well as of the
individual) are realness, sensitivity to and understanding of others, and
acceptance of and respect for others--that is, the conditions for the
development of self-actualizing persons.
There are a number of implications of the concept of the fully functioning
person: (1) One who is fully functioning is a creative person, since
creativeness is fostered by sensitive openness to experience. (2) Since one is
free from defensiveness, one's basically good nature will manifest itself; one
is constructive and trustworthy. (3) One is dependable, but not necessarily
predictable, since one will respond to the unique pattern of internal and
external stimuli at each moment. (4) One is free, and not determined. Though
the freedom-determinism issue is complex, there is a sense in which fully functioning
individuals choose and experience freedom even though their behavior is
determined, since being open to all elements in the situation, they will behave
in a way that will be satisfying and self-actualizing.
The goal of education is or should be the development of fully functioning or
self-actualizing persons. Only such persons can survive and thus make possible
the survival of the human race--in a rapidly changing world characterized by
tensions among races, nations, and other groups. The fully functioning person is adaptable and has learned how
to learn.
To educate toward a fully functioning person requires that education cease
focusing on imparting facts, information, and knowledge, that it go beyond the
objectives of development of the intellect or of thinking persons, to concern
for the development of the affective, emotional, and interpersonal relationship
qualities of individuals. The whole person must be educated.
Learning related to the development of the whole person is significant
learning, learning which is personal and experiential and which makes a
difference in the person. The individual doesn't have to be motivated toward
significant learning-the motivation is inherent in the drive toward
self-actualization. Significant learning occurs when the learner perceives the
subject matter as relevant for his or her own purposes. Significant learning
for those whose self-concepts are formed may require a change in the
self-organization, and this may be threatening, but in such cases learning is facilitated
when external threats to the self are at a minimum. Freedom from threat enables
the learner to explore, to differentiate, to try out new ideas, to change.
Significant learning is facilitated by experiential involvement with real
problems. Initiation of the process and participation in it by the learner
fosters significant learning. Self-evaluation rather than external criticism
and evaluation fosters independence, creativity, and self-reliance. Significant
learning, involving all these elements, is learning how to learn.
Significant learning involves the whole person and requires that we change our
focus in education from cognition to a combination of the cognitive and the
affective, and from teaching and the teacher to learning and the learner. The
teacher becomes the facilitator of learning by providing the conditions for
self-initiated, self-directed learning.
There are three major conditions for such learning. They are, of course, the
three conditions which lead to positive personality change in counseling or
therapy, and to the development of fully functioning persons-realness in the
facilitator; prizing and acceptance of or trust in the learner, and empathic
understanding. The contribution of Rogers is significant in that it goes beyond
traditional psychological and educational theories of learning, which consider
learning almost solely in terms of individual or intrapersonal determinants and
impersonal environmental stimuli, to recognition of the social or interpersonal
relationship of students with the teacher and with each other and the
atmosphere or psychological climate of the school .
Learning also depends, of course, upon the learner. Motivation is a normal,
natural characteristic of human beings if it has not been suppressed or
destroyed by mistreatment. Stimulation by problem situations also occurs
naturally in normal persons. Finally, the learner must perceive the
facilitative conditions in the teacher, and here, also, individuals who have
not been mistreated, deceived, conned, or turned off will be open to and
recognize these conditions.
The teacher may need some help in implementing the facilitative conditions, and
some suggestions are made. The real teacher does not know everything and does
not pretend to. He or she can admit mistakes. The teacher manifests prizing,
acceptance, and trust by really listening to the student, without evaluating
her or him, and by responding to what the student says-to the attitudes and
feelings expressed as well as to the content. Listening also evidences the
attempt to understand, and responding attempts to communicate understanding.
Teaching becomes a real, spontaneous,
personal encounter with students.
The teacher also facilitates learning by building upon real problems in the
lives and culture of students, by providing many easily accessible resources
(including his or her own knowledge), by developing contracts with students
through which they can develop their own learning programs, by providing
programmed instruction units, by small group sessions and discussions or
projects, by inquiry learning, by simulation learning, and by encounter-group
sessions.
Evaluation of learning in self-initiated, self-directed learning should be done
by the learner. Criteria are necessary, however. These should be realistic,
that is, they should reflect the requirements of life, as set by society and
its institutions, and made available to students by teachers, counselors, or
others in the school. Students can then evaluate themselves in terms of these
criteria.
It should be obvious that this approach to education and learning has important
implications for teacher education and for school administrators. To use this
approach teachers would need preparation which focused upon the teaching
relationship and the facilitation of encounter groups. Administrators adhering
to what McGregor designates as theory Y than what he labels theory X would fit
into such a system.
Educational systems as they now exist would have to change considerably if they
were to incorporate this approach to education. A plan for self-directed change
in a school system is outlined. With the initiative and support of a few top
administrators and school board members, a program of intensive small-group
experiences could lead to such change.
This approach to education could well provide the basis for an integrated
system, bringing together the cognitive contributions of Piaget and Bruner, the
conditioning methods of Skinner, and the humanistic ideas of Montessori and of
others currently developing humanistic education. It recognizes the involvement
of the whole person in education-that cognitive learning involves affective
elements, and that emotional and affective development must be a concern of
education.
Our educational system is obsolete. It is obsolete not only in curriculum but
in methods. Methods of instruction ignore much of what we know about the
conditions of learning. The application of conditioning methods through the use
of programmed instruction is not a sufficient answer. Our curriculum focuses on
cognitive learning and ignores affective learning, which is nevertheless
occurring in an unplanned, haphazard manner. In the world in which we live and
will be living, we need persons who are not only mature intellectually but
effectively, who can not only think but who can feel and relate to others.
A humanistic approach to education addresses these problems. It provides an
understanding of the psychological conditions of learning, Of cognitive and
affective development leading to self-actualizing or fully functioning persons.
The conditions are the attitudes of respecting, prizing, and trusting others;
of realness, genuineness, or honesty in dealing with others; and of empathic
understanding of others.
To change our educational system in this direction will require a real
revolution in education, since not only the methods but the goals of education
must be changed. It will not be easy; there is and will be opposition, from
those who see the change as displacing or detracting from cognitive education and
from those who believe that affective education is the province of other social
institutions, of the family and the church. But these institutions are not
performing this task, a task which must be performed if society is to survive.
If the school does not perform it, some other institution must be developed to
do so. It would be inefficient and ineffective to attempt to split the
individual into cognitive and affective elements, each to be educated in a
different institution. The individual is a whole, and his or her cognitive and
affective development intermesh and must be developed together. The same
psychological conditions are essential for cognitive and affective development.
REFERENCES
1. This, and the following unfootnoted
quotations and material, are from C. R. Rogers, "This Is Me," Chapter
I in On Becoming a Person (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961).
2. C. R. Rogers, "A Theory of Therapy, Personality, and Interpersonal
Relationships, as Developed in the Client-centered Framework," in S. Koch,
ed., Psychology: A Study of Science (New
York: McGrawHill, 1959), study I, Conceptual and Systematic, vol. 3, Formulations of the Person and the Social Context, pp. 184-256.
3. Ibid., pp. 188-192.
4. Ibid., p. 191.
5. Ibid., p. 192.
6. Rogers, On Becoming a Person, op.
cit., pp. 90-92, 194-195.
7. Rogers, "A Theory of Therapy, Personality, and Interpersonal
Relationships," op. cit., p.221.
8. Ibid., pp. 194-212.
9. A. W. Combs and D. Snygg, Individual Behavior: A Perceptual Approach
to Behavior, rev. ed. (New York: Harper
& Row, 1959).
10. Rogers, "A Theory of Therapy, Personality and Interpersonal
Relationships," op. cit., pp. 222-233.
11. Ibid., pp. 236-240.
12. Ibid., p. 216.
13. A. H. Maslow, "Self-actualizing People: A Study of Psychological
Health," in C. E. Moustakas, ed., The Self: Explorations in
Personal Growth (New York: Harper & Row, 1956), p. 16.
14. Rogers, Freedom to Learn
(Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1969), p. 290.
15. Ibid., pp. 290-291.
16. Ibid., p. 268.
17. Ibid., p. 269.
18. Ibid., pp. 294-295.
19. Ibid., pp. 105-106.
20. Ibid., p. vi.
21. Ibid., p. 104.
22. lbid,, p. 218.
23. Ibid., pp. 103-104.
24. Quoted from James Reston, "The Forgotten Factor," New
York Times, November 29, 1970, p. 11, by
Rogers, in "Bringing Together Ideas and Feelings in Learning." In D.
A. Read and S. B. Simon, eds., Humanistic Education Sourcebook (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975), pp. 39-49.
25. Rogers, Freedom to Learn, op.
cit., pp. 152-154.
26. Ibid., p. 103.
27. Ibid., p. 105.
28. Ibid., p. 106.
29. Ibid., p. 108.
30. Ibid., p. 114.
31. Ibid., p. 112.
32. See, for example, J. Holt, How Children Fail (New York: Pitman,1964); J. Kozol, Death at
an Early Age (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1967); C. E. Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom (New York: Random House, 1970); and C. H. Patterson,
Humanistic Education (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.-. Prentice-Hall, 1973).
33. Rogers, Freedom to Learn, op.
cit., p. 115.
34. The ideas in this section are adapted from Patterson, Humanistic
Education, op. cit.
35. Rogers, Freedom to Learn, op.
cit., p. 130.
36. Ibid., pp. 132-133.
37. See Rogers, Carl Rogers on Encounter Groups (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Patterson,
Humanistic Education, op. cit.,
Chapter 11, "Groups in Humanistic Education."
38. Rogers, On Becoming a Person, op.
cit., p. 290.
39. Rogers, "Bringing Together Ideas and Feelings in Learning," op.
cit., p. 47. See also "The Preparation of Humanistic Teachers,"
Chapter 12 in Patterson, Humanistic Education, op. cit.
40. D. M. McGregor, "The Human Side of Enterprise," in W. G. Bennis,
K. D. Benne, and R. Chin, eds., The Planning of Change (New York; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), pp.
431-442. [First published in Adventures in Thought and Action:
Proceedings of the Fifth Anniversary Convocation
of the Schools of Management (Cambridge,
Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1957.) ] See also D. M. McGregor, The Human Side
of Enterprise (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1960).
41. Rogers, Freedom to Learn, op.
cit., p. 206.
42. Ibid., pp. 207-208.
43. Ibid., p. 304.
44. Ibid., p. 315.
45. See Rogers, "The Process of the Basic Encounter Group," in J. F.
T. Bugental, ed., The Challenges of Humanistic Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), pp. 261-276; Rogers, Carl
Rogers on Encounter Groups, op. cit.
46. C. B. Truax and B. R. Carkbuff, Toward Egective Psychotherapy. (Chicago: Aldine, 1966), pp. 116-117.
47. Patterson, Humanistic Education, op. cit., chapter 3.
48. Rogers, Client-centered Therapy (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1951), p. 386.
49. M. A. White, review of Carl Rogers' Freedom to Learn, Contemporary Psychology 15 (1970): 175-176.
50. The writer's Humanistic Education, op. cit., is an attempt to build on this systematic foundation.
51. F. T. Wilhehns, "Humanization via the Curriculum," in R. R.
Leeper, ed., Humanizing Education: The Person in the Process (Washington, D.C.: Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development, 1967).
52. F. C. Emmerling, "A Study of the Relationships Between Personality
Characteristics of Classroom Teachers and Pupil Perceptions" (doctoral
diss., Auburn University, 1961).
53. R. E. Bills, unpublished study, cited by Rogers in Freedom to
Learn, op. cit., pp. 117-118.
54. W. A. Lewis, J. T. Lovell, and B. E. Jesse, "Interpersonal Relationships
and Pupil Progress," Personal and Guidance journal, 44 (1964):396-401.
55. J, B. Macdonald and E. Zaret, "A Study of Openness in Classroom
Interactions" (unpublished manuscript, Marquette University, 1966), cited
in Rogers, Freedom to Learn, op.
cit., p. 118.
56. D. N. Aspy, "A Study of Three Facilitative Conditions and Their
Relationships to the Achievement of Third-Grade Students" (unpublished
doctoral diss., University of Kentucky, 1965); D. N. Aspy, "The Effect of
Teacher-offered Conditions of Empathy, Positive Regard, and Congruence upon
Student Achievement," Florida Journal of Educational Research 11
(1) (1969):39-48. This study and a number
of other studies are summarized in D. N. Aspy, Toward a Technology
for Humanizing Education (Champaign, Ill.:
Research Press, 1972).
57. D. N. Aspy and W. Hadlock, "The Effects of High and Low Functioning
Teachers upon Students' Academic Performance and Truancy" (unpublished
study), cited in R. R. Carkhuff, Helping and Human Relations, vol. II (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1969), p. 258.
58. R R. Carkhuff and B. G. Berenson, Beyond Counseling and Therapy (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), p. 14.
59. Rogers, "Interpersonal Relationships: U.S.A. 2000," Journal
of Applied Behavioral Science 4 (1968):265-280.
Dr.C. H. Patterson