Abraham Maslow Is Most Well-Known

Abraham Maslow is most well-known for what has become known by most as, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow theorized that people must achieve certain needs before being able to fully experience needs of a higher order. So, in other words those who are barred from higher thought by an inability to achieve shelter and obtain enough food to eat, or basic perceived security are likely to become stunted in their ability to perform abstract thought processes and achieve more abstract personal goals. At the pinnacle of this hierarchy Maslow placed self-actualization, an ability to place one's self in an abstract position and understand lofty concepts such as justice, equality and truth. (Roeckelein, 1998, p. 318) in the context of education it is fair to say that the development of Maslow's hierarchy as well as many other contributing concepts and the real lag that is seen by those who for many reasons lack the abilty to achieve basic needs, have done much to explain why some people develop and learn, accessing higher order thoughts and concepts and others do not.

One of Maslow's core theoretical beliefs is that for an individual to become healthy and mature, he or she must engage in independent thought, and be aware of such thought as their own. This concept can be seen in younger children, in instruction when they revel in the joy of having figured out the answer to a difficult problem or created a new way of doing something. Taking this aspect of Maslow's theory to application requires that a new light be placed on subjects, such as mathematics. Mathematics must then be taught in such a way that individuals believe that they have the capacity, once they have mastered certain basic skills to create novel ways of finding solutions. In 8th to 12th grade instruction this requires a serious bit of creativity, as many students enter these years with preconceived notions about the difficulty of math and the idea that there is only one right answer and one right way to achieve it. Redirecting thought to express the idea that individual motivation can be an achievable goal of development and learning, even when it comes to math should be the goal of all instruction.

In many ways Maslow was a stark critic of mechanistic thought and fact-based rote education. Simply offering a set of facts to a person and expecting them to understand the concepts that surround them would seem to Maslow as counterproductive.

As a critic of science, Maslow (1956) asserted that the classical mechanistic approach of science (e.g., the behavioristic viewpoint in psychology) was inappropriate for characterizing the whole individual, and he advocated a humanistic approach (Roeckelein, 1998, p. 318)

Individuals must be offered an opportunity to experience learning in a unique way, to fulfill the aspect of self-actualization that includes the perception of the self as unique and therefore valuable. "Maslow (1970) described self-actualizing individuals as mentally more healthy. " (Dai, Moon & Feldhusen, 1998, p. 59) Maslow might have agreed with Bruner in that the mechanistic approach does not meet the needs of the whole child and that children must be given the opportunity for higher thought, and learning, i.e. be given the opportunity to explore varied ways to reach answers to complex questions, such as applicable math equations. (Palmer, Bresler, & Cooper, 2001, p. 92)

To Maslow and others the emphasis must be on, self-awareness, the sense of "I,"not primarily to discover something new, but to experience in such a way that the experience originates in me" (Fromm, p. 50). Maslow (p. 89) appears to equate his concept of the "peak experience" with "self-actualizing creativeness."

(Gold, 1965, p. 105)

Creativity is somethat ais challenged in many forms of learning, one of which is math, as many perceive that mathi is not creative but simply a rote list of concepts associated with how to solve an equation. Teaching math historically, has reiterated this idea as much instruction in the past emphasized that there was not only one correct answer but only one correct way to achieve this answer.

The industrial trainer theory of teaching is authoritarian, it involves strict discipline, and the transmission of knowledge as a stream of facts, to be learned and applied. Teaching is a matter of passing on a body of knowledge (Lawlor, 1988,-page 17). The moral values provide a view of schooling as consisting of hard work, effort and self-discipline. Hence the view of teaching is that of rote learning, memorization, the practice of skills, hard application in school "work" at the subject (i.e. mathematics). Mathematics is not "having fun" (Prais, 1987a). (Ernest, 1991, p. 148)

The old standards of math education have been applied for centuries and are hard pressed to be edged out by the idea that teaching individual children at any level the skills they need to be creative in math, so they may apply these skills to abstract and concrete thought is relatively new.

In addition to the this applying such concepts to students at upper levels middle and secondary education could be even more problematic as many have already been indoctrinated into the concept of math as "work" and rote memorizations of rules. Maslow's idea that individuals must be incited to learn by allowing individuality, might not play out well in a class where perceived obstacles against learning are already grounded in years of thinking that math was to difficult. (Hashway, 1988, p. 106) Yet, they should be tried, as seeking learning in creative ways is the goal of the teacher who seeks to inspire rather than simply impart facts. One manner in which this might be done is to apply a spiral learning model, where facts are available and frequently returned to but are seen only as tools, to be applied in novel ways.

Maslow believed that motivation was as much an aspect of personality development as the ability to speak. If the individual is motivated to learn it must be so as an aspect of their core, and this can be developed by meeting lower and upper level needs through instruction and learning. (Hashway, 1988, p. 148) to achieve this goal in mathematics might seem lofty, and yet it may prove to be the core reason why some achieve and others do not. Students must be motivated to learn by being shown that they are safe, i.e. not judged but guided and capable of learning even difficult concepts and this is especially true of those who have been stymied by failure in the past.

In one article describing the application success of Japanese Math programs, as compared to U.S. programs there are some interesting observations about math instruction. The opening point being that in Japan, homework is not necessarily something that is designed or assigned by the teacher but that is expected to be provided by a parent, teaching core skills. The instructional time is on the other hand often centered on one or two carefully chosen problems, discussions and abstract concepts associated with them and student and instructor input on the flow of the skills needed to perform the problems.

A the teacher presents new content and develops the ideas and concepts through rich examples, applications, and model building. It is not unusual for a mathematics period to revolve around a few carefully selected problems about which the teacher and students actively engage in exchanging ideas. A review of skills, as we know it, is relegated to homework rather than allotted time within the mathematics class period. Therefore, within a typical forty-five-minute class period, the Japanese teacher does what he or she was trained to do - deliver instruction - by introducing mathematical ideas and concepts and extending the development of each student's thinking. (Reys & Reys, 1995, p. 474)