Question

what are the challenges of human development​

Answer 1

Human development faces three profound challenges:

Potential – we are failing our moral obligation and economic necessity to provide for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Our system of cradle-to-career development of human potential is ragged, fragmented, and ineffective.

Poverty – 20% of children are in poverty and another 20% are at the cusp, causing horrible disruptions of natural human development. Schools are a small, if vital, component of a complex socioeconomic system. Can’t innovate in isolation.

Productivity – Baumol disease (the rising cost of labor in non-innovating sectors) is quietly leaching 2% of public education resources from schools each year! Must envision a long-range response beyond technology since human development is a social process.

Answer 2

1.Experiential phases and modes

The contents of the core sections of this Encyclopedia might be understood as linked over time in terms of the problems and values encountered under different challenges to human development. There are many concepts of the phases of human development (Section H). The possibility of such an ordering might best be illustrated through one which links such phases to value dilemmas.

Value crises in a life cycle

2.In Erik Erikson's scheme (Childhood and Society, 1963), each individual goes through 8 stages in life. In each stage a value crisis is experienced which is crucial for continued development. The stages, with their corresponding crises are as follows:

Infancy (basic trust vs. basic mistrust)

Early childhood (autonomy vs. doubt)

Play age (initiative vs. guilt)

School age (industry vs. inferiority)

Adolescence (identity vs. role confusion)

Young adulthood (intimacy vs. isolation)

Adulthood (generativity vs. stagnation or self-absorption)

Mature adulthood (integrity vs despair)

3. Moral and ethical dilemmas (virtues and sins)

An effort has been made by Donald Capps (Deadly Sins and Saving Virtues, 1987) to relate the stages in this life-cycle theory to the traditional basic sins and corresponding virtues of the Christian tradition (taking into account reservations concerning male bias noted by critics of Erikson's original theory). This is of interest because of the view that such root sins engender other problems by a sort of "domino effect". Analogous views can be found in other traditions, notably the Buddhist.