First reading: Biological, social and cultural basis of the process of human development

Questions that will guide the reading and discussion:

1. Is it the development a prerequisite for education?

Development is strongly connected with education, even in the first stages of the human life. This relationship is based on the effect that education has in the development, but to make this association development needs to be evolved previously.

Children in their first years learn from their environment, their families and context, and the majority of them if they follow the regular steps of evolution, they mature more or less in the same path and simultaneously due to the genetic code.

The differences that can be observed between babies of the same age are because of the educative influence that the family has during the first stages of development. With this interaction with their parents and siblings, the child starts to develop the first phases of intelligence, language and social competence.

Without this first contact with the context, education would be a very though task to develop in that kid.

2. Is it the development a result of education?

Development is not just one of the main prerequisites so education can perform properly, but also the result of the educational process.

Education has an essential role because it is the main explanation to understand the reason why the individual development and culture are so connected, as well as being the principal way to create development.

Nevertheless, development need to have a base so its creating can be evolved, and the role of education in this process is to lead the human being farther away from what he or she could have arrived from their own means. What education is searching is to get the most of the person starting from what this person has learned on his own.

Also, social interaction within some sort of educational aspect helps the kid to develop and to become active members in the society, and can even also make them participate and learn from the adult activity by observing or by imitation.

With this new maturation, the child is able to move to higher development levels, so here the important point is not the quantity of interaction that the child has but the quality of them as well as the motivation of the kid. If the child does not feel comfortable and confident with himself or with the people or the interaction that surround him, development and education are not acting efficiently.

3. What are the mechanisms of evolutionary change?

Firstly, social interaction is essential to ensure a good development in the kid as well as promoting a proper education for him. This interaction needs to be significant so the child can really learn from it. He needs to analyze, understand and assimilate this new knowledge to achieve the maturation that is looked for in this process.

However, interaction with the adult world is not the only way to get kids learn. Also a good relation and interaction with the objects and materials from their environment are a source of knowledge. But even in theses cases, the role of the adults is extremely important as it is their job to give the children the objects with which they are going to interact and the ones who prepare the activities with those materials.

Taking into consideration everything stated in this document, development follows a more personal line, which is the natural one, based on the genetic code and the biological process and development that characterize the human beings and occurs without any kind of effort, and then there is the social and cultural line marked by the interaction with the environment and the society.