Affective Learning: Why We Need a Humanistic Curriculum

Abstract

Life is a complicated journey and there are many internal and external pressures to fulfill our lives. Education is one of the tools to handle these pressures. Currently most of the educational programmes in the world are based on traditional and technological perspectives which help people to reach out to their expectations such as career and money. Traditional and technological education programmes address the development of the cognitive domain of learning. Philosophers, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and educators have begun to criticize the dominant side of cognitive learning since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Because there is a missing point in humans’ lives and this point is defined as affective development. Affective domain as a huge area inclusive of ego, motivation, concern, attitude, value, self-respect, ethics, self-control, curiosity, creativity, mental health, dependence, personality development, group dynamics and dreams. In terms of business, these concepts address soft skills. In terms of education, affective domain refers to humanistic curriculum and there are unique outcomes because of individual differences, backgrounds, and experiences. The aim of this study is to discuss why we need a humanistic curriculum because there has yet to be designed a pure humanistic curriculum.

Keywords:

• humanistic curriculum
• technological curriculum
• traditional curriculum
• self-actualization
• soft skills

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).