Learning and development I

Esther Asensio Castillo, group 71; A

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
Jess Palacios
Is it the development a prerequisite for education?
Yes, the development is a prerequisite for education as Jess Palacios defends. According to him,
when we born, our brain, our nervous system, our muscles, etc., have some level of development, but
it is minimum. Because as Palacio says, one of the human main characteristic is to born with an
elevate level of immaturity which slowly and gradually will mature. In this way, what the writer wants
us to know is that all the children are born with a least development which will increase slowly
towards the maturation, that's why the education is needed, to guide this way.
Moreover, Palacios gives to us two important philosophic theories which have also the same idea. On
one hand, J.Locke (1632-1704), who started with the philosophic current called empiricism.
According to his wisdom words, all the girls and boys are born without psychological and spiritual
contents, it means without neither innate ideas nor innate behaviors. So at the moment a baby is born,
his/her mind is as a white page, which is what he called as: tabula rasa. This page will be full thanks
of the own experiences, the stimulation and the received education. According to Locke (Palacios
defends it too), the education becomes a fundamental piece in the human's life. That was a modern
idea taking into account the age he lived, as he didn't take as an education principle the fact of
punishing the students, he wanted another type of education, this one centered on the patient
instruction, the affect corrections, the good examples and the positive valuations about the correct
conducts.
On the other hand, in the European continent there was another point of view. J. J. Rousseau (17121778), after Kant theories, thought about the possibility of borning with some innate characteristics,
in which we would found the natural goodness of the children (they know what is correct or incorrect)
and the innate plan of developing (innate categories of thinking, for example: the space and time).
This plan is about the maturation, which will give different development steps, each one will have its
own psychological characteristics and will ask for its own educative needs. So, according Rousseau,
the education will be an important part of this maturation because it will be which provide the children
with the tools they need in order to learn. It means that the good education will be that one which will
provide them with experiences that stimulate them depending on their maturation and development
level.

Is it the development a result of education?

No, the education helps in the development but it is not the result. As Palacios writes, there are
different influences which will shape the development of each individual. It starts in the biggest
influence, which is the specie. Inside this one we can find the culture, then the historic moment, the
social group and finally the individual characteristics which are the genotype, the age and the
individual contexts. It's for sure that all this influences will help the development being one way or
another, for example depending on the culture a children is born they will learn to do the things
different than living in another place. But as Palacios says, knowing only about one topic is not

Learning and development I

Esther Asensio Castillo, group 71; A
enough, because for example talking about the culture, there are cultures which have a big stability
and change slowly, meanwhile there are others which the changes are much accelerated. Thats why
Palacios says that we have to move to the next influence which is the historic moment in order to see
how the human development is working inside one determinate culture.
But the education is an important part, as through it different parts of the humans are stimulated. Its
true that a person learns a lot of things just living his/her life without having an specific education,
but we all know that its not the same having an instructor who will teach and show a lot of things
one cannot see. Although the important point is not only to teach, it is said by Palacios when he talks
about Rousseau, who thought that the children have to be provide with different tools in order to learn
or give them the opportunity to life different experiences that will make them to learn too. But the
importance of the education is not only about the student, because the environment s/he lives in will
mark her/him too. I mean, according to Palacios, the development will be also shaped for the
surroundings and the parents education, in most of the cases it will be not the same a kid whose
parents have a high level of education that a kid whose parents didnt have study. This is because in
the first family, the language that will be used and consequently taught to the child will be much
richer than in the second.
In conclusion, the development is not a result of education because as Palacios wrote, it is just a little
(but a huge important) part of the humans development.

What are the mechanisms of evolutionary change?

The mechanisms of evolutionary change are mostly explained by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the
British naturalist who according to Palacios is an important piece in the evolutionary psychology.
Darwins evolutionary theory was shown in his book On the origin of the species by means of natural
selection, whose information was extracted after years of observation. In this way he formulated his
theory about the natural selection and the survival of the best adapted into the natural changes.
What he observed was that the species who were better adapted into the natural changes (for example
the weather) were those ones who would survive and consequently would continue transmitting their
characteristics to their offspring. Moreover, he observed that the species were mutable, it means that
the different species pass through a lot of modifications over the years.
But a part of those mechanisms there are two more, the genetic drift and the migrations or genetic
flow. The first one is the change of the frequency of a gene variant or allele in a population. The
offsprings alleles are a combination of its parents alleles and what the genetic drift do is to cause
gene variants to disappear completely and consequently reduce the genetic variation.
The second one, the migrations (also called genetic flow) are transfer of alleles from one population
to another. What it do is to make one population appear genes of another one, and it would make
change the evolution of this specie.