A Critique of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers as Educators

Abstract

In this article, the author examines the thoughts of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers on teaching and higher education themes, particularly the humanistic psychology approach to education. It reviews Maslow’s expert introduction of materials on psychology, literature, ethics, and philosophy in class, which demonstrates an interdisciplinary approach to teaching students. Maslow developed ideal core goals for college, emphasizing student creativity and experiences in the educational process, whereas Rogers tended to take a humanistic psychology approach to teaching. His philosophy emphasizes student-centered learning and client-centered therapy. Rogers considered the teacher a facilitator of learning, who builds relationships with students based on empathy, trust, and prioritizing of student needs, whereas Maslow adopted a hybrid position on education. His undergraduate teaching views included a student-directed curriculum and degrees of empathic involvement; yet he maintained a disciplinarian expert’s authority. His approach is also compared with that of graduate education. By contrast, Rogers’s view on education was homogeneous, making no distinctions as to what a student is supposed to learn at each level. This article compares the educational perspectives of two “giants” of humanistic psychology.

This article traces the careers of Abraham H. Maslow and Carl Rogers as teachers and critics of teaching and education. It provokes the question of what constitutes a humanistic psychology approach to education. The analysis compares these pioneers’ views of what has been deemed “third force psychology” (Bugental, 1964; De Carvalho, 1990).

Humanistic conceptions of education have always focused on the “Know thy self” principle. This saying, engraved on the wall of Apollo’s temple at Delphi, is well-known throughout the history of the Western civilization. For hundreds of years, the “self” was generally related to conceptions of the soul (Martin & Barresi, 2006). The term “humanistic education” appeared most prominently in On Humanistic Education: (Six Inaugural Orations: 1699–1707) by Giambattista Vico (Vico, 1993). Vico used the term “sapiento” or self-knowledge. Such knowledge was not only about internal reflections but also about the entire thought curriculum—a combination of learning from within and learning from without.

The humanistic predecessors of Rogers, whose pedagogical position included the importance of empathy, authenticity, acceptance, and active listening, were scholars who lived in Central Europe from the first half of the 17th century until the first half of the 20th century. These scholars included J. A. Comenius (Komensky), J. F. Herbart, and Otto Chulp.

Self-knowledge may be understood as a product of internal reflection and external validation. It is developed intrinsically through meditation, but mere internal reflection is limited. Whereas self-knowledge is partly derived internally, interactions with external sources—such as others’ reactions or through education, either self-directed or from formal schooling—also contribute to self-knowledge. Self-reflective activities are subject to epistemic problems. For instance, self-knowledge is neither infallible nor omniscient (Nodelman et al., 1995). People lie to themselves, not just to others, being unaware of most of their thoughts or distort them for various reasons such as to maximize their self-esteem.

Examining Abraham Maslow’s Views

Maslow’s Experimental Personality Class

A tape of Maslow’s class titled “Experiential Approaches to Personality” has been transcribed into book form titled, Personality & Growth: A Humanistic Psychologist in the Classroom (hereinafter, Personality and Growth; Maslow, 1965). An analysis of the class is presented here as an example of his undergraduate teaching, together with examples from his journals (Lowry, 1978), references to his view and relationship with his graduate students, and Feigenbaum’s memories from the period between 1962 and 1965 (Feigenbaum, 2020) when he was a colleague of his at Brandeis.

In Personality and Growth (Maslow, 1965), Maslow combined lectures with experiential exercises derived from the T group movement in his psychoanalysis sessions. The T group movement refers to individuals undergoing training while observing and seeking to improve themselves and their interpersonal relationships. This class represented the best of Maslow’s undergraduate teaching. Unfortunately, by 1967, Maslow no longer attracted the undergraduates at Brandeis, judging from the reactions of many of his students (Hoffman, 1988).

The Brandeis course catalog description follows: “Experiential Approaches to the Study of Personality: A survey of efforts of self-analysis, self-therapy, and self-growth; Dreams and Symbol Psychology: peak, mystic, and psychedelic experience—archaic and pre-rational cognition; recovery of the pre-conscious” (Maslow, 2013).

Twenty-four students enrolled in the course, 11 men and 13 women, majoring in psychology. The course had 12 sessions; each session consisted of a 2-hr lecture and a laboratory session for self-knowledge. To some extent, the lab session aimed to resemble a T group. Except for the period from September 30 to October 21, Maslow’s assistant, Hung-Min Chiang, took extensive notes and summarized the meetings’ contents. The rest of the classes were tape-recorded and transcribed. The students in the class agreed to the recordings.

As it turned out, the distinction between the lecture and the lab was weak. Many of the lab sessions employed the themes developed in his lectures. An analysis of both the lectures and the labs indicates that Maslow employed them to promulgate his concepts, such as peak experience, self-actualization, and becoming—being needs versus deficiency needs. There were also critiques of higher education and extended discussions of his position on sexuality.

The course, viewed as a whole, was a tour de force of how any highly educated, well-read, interactive professor would teach a class. Maslow was voracious. If Maslow were considered a humanist and a teacher based on this class, so would a multitude of the “best professors.”

However, Maslow differed in that he introduced concepts specific to his views on human behavior, thought motivation, and ethics. Despite his encyclopedic knowledge, Maslow paid little attention to the long experimental and experiential education history.

Maslow appeared forgetful in assuming that the novelty of what he believed constitutes the core of nontraditional education history. No references to contemporary modes of experimental education were made in his writings; he also seemed to have forgotten his early interest in experimental education. A significant reason for Maslow’s attendance of the University of Wisconsin was to participate in the experimental college of Meiklejohn.

Maslow was heavily emotionally invested in the teaching of his personality classes. He gave one in 1962, like the one in 1963, and later in 1968. According to The Journals of A. H. Maslow, Maslow wrote,

2. am.-I can’t sleep. Thinking of personality courses, things to do, etc., woke me up. It’s been a big success for me and everyone else. Will give it again next semester (Fall, 1963), calling it Experiential Approaches to the Study of Personality; Esther Osborne is doing nicely as a teaching assistant. Ernest Croy not so well as write-upper . . . I may have to do it myself. (Lowry, 1978, p. 294)

By 1965, Maslow became bitter about his undergraduate students, as demonstrated by the following quote from his journal, dated March 6, 1965:

Call from Diane Larkind from Menninger Clinic about some business reminded me of when I first came to Brandeis and was rejected by the students. Most of them dropped out of my class. It bred confusion, depression, anger in me, self-questioning, etc. My first contact with overindulged and undisciplined generations was tempted and seduced and rewarded into learning. It took me a long time to understand it. (If it can be said that I understand it, even today. I identify so little with such people that I don’t and can’t understand them (only two students came to anything). (Lowry, 1978, p. 497)

Maslow’s early teaching remembrances do not correspond with the responses obtained from a survey conducted with students in his classes around 1955. They lauded him and admired him as a great teacher. Was his memory of those early days of teaching at Brandeis clouded by his later experience teaching undergraduates?

The “experiential personality” class may have been repeated several times. However, there are no references in the journal and other sources as to the success as viewed by Maslow, until 1968. The 1968 class had less than favorable results, from his students’ perspective. According to Hoffman (1988), it was the worst experience in Maslow’s 35 years of teaching. One third of the class, made up mostly of undergraduates, rebelled against what they perceived as Maslow’s “authoritarian” attitude and demanded to form their own group experience. Maslow permitted them to do so and, after that, much of the class’s tension was lifted. This antiauthoritarian reaction may have reflected the historical conditions of 1968, with students’ rebellious attitudes permeating his class.

Maslow’s Viewpoints on Education

Maslow promoted several major educational themes in his writings as follows:

1. Intrinsic versus extrinsic learning as being central to the educative process;

2. The importance of creativity in education and the blocks against creativity and creative learning in school;

3. The role of cognition in education (i.e., cognition and the role of the primary process in creative thinking); and

4. The use of “peak experiences” to foster creative thinking.

He referred to art as particularly encouraging creativity: both visual arts (he had long been interested in music [Morant & Maslow, 1965] and aesthetics [Maslow & Mintz, 1956]) and dancing were of great educational values, and he believed they are core to education toward self-actualization.

There is an extended discussion of the “ideal college” in Maslow’s book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (Maslow, 1971); and in conversations reported in his journals. His ideal college is based upon intrinsic learning devoid of grades and credits, and required courses, not age-graded but lifelong in scope; a community of people interested in learning not bound by distance (pre-distance learning):

In the ideal college there would be no credits, no degrees, and no required courses. A person would learn what he wanted to learn. . . In the ideal college, intrinsic education would be available to anyone who wanted it. . .The college would be life long, for learning can take place all through life. (Maslow, 1971, p. 175)

Maslow believed that as part of discovering one’s identity, one should search for one’s authentic self. Therefore, the curriculum should include learning authenticity through T groups and courses he gave in his personality class. A summary of Maslow’s and Roger’s views on education is in “The Humanistic Paradigm in Education” (De Carvalho, 1990). It provides a comprehensive set of references to Maslow’s and Roger’s writing on education at that time.

Maslow also wrote several articles on teaching and learning. He received a Rockefeller Foundation grant in 1967 titled “Support for Prof Abraham H. Maslow to Enable Him to Devote his Time to Apply Theories of Humanistic Psychology to Education” (Rockefeller Archives, Brandeis U, (06800434). The final product of the grant was to be a book on humanistic psychology and education. I have been unable to find out why it was not written and what happened to the money (as the archives are unavailable because of COVID 19).

Maslow’s first venture into and understanding of learning in humans are discussed in his master’s thesis at the University of Wisconsin, titled “The Effects.” Maslow also wrote several articles on the theme of education and teaching (Maslow, 1968a, 1968b; Maslow & Zimmerman, 1956).

A common theme of enhancing creativity and the creative attitude permeates all of them, including (a) the shortfall of education designed to please the teacher, and (b) encouraging a creative attitude using preconscious processes, such as free association and peak experiences.

Maslow expressed his disaffection with higher education; in some ways, he adopted a progressive and proactive stance toward reforming higher education. In his journal (Lowry, 1978), he laid down his criteria for an ideal college and education, suggesting the following:

1. An ideal college should be small: 600 to 800 students.

2. It should enhance personal responsibility. The student should borrow the full tuition cost to be paid back out of future earnings;

3. It should be an institution for lifelong learning, educating older students and the 18 to 22 years cohort;

4. In an ideal college, students should be able to take a leave of absence at their discretion to be able to gain work experience and earn income;

5. An ideal college should be able to hire part-time faculty, many of whom should be non-PhDs, such as engineers, bankers, and physicians;

6. Students should be able to enroll on a part-time basis;

7. Most faculty should be able to study simultaneously with the students;

8. Many students should be allowed to teach (with supervision);

9. Faculty should teach one traditional course, with the rest of their time available for student consultations in the office. The student would decide how to use these hours;

10. The student should be a research assistant to a faculty member. The student should be most willing to learn as an apprentice;

11. There should be no degrees or credits;

12. Special provisions should be made for mothers with children;

13. The faculty should eat together and live in faculty housing provided by the college;

14. There should be a library for scholarly work; and

15. There should be no fraternities or sororities. Dorms for students should be of small sizes.

It is incredible to look at aspects of Maslow’s ideal college in 2022 college education. Today, we have lifelong learning; we borrow for tuition with its detrimental effects; we have part-time students; we have adjunct faculty teaching part-time with benefits and detriments; and, in some colleges, we have student-taught courses.

In another journal entry, Maslow said,

Talked with Kat. But this led to our ideal college with no grades, requirements, credits, etc. (Ideal paradigm=lonely student sitting and thinking. Then comes tutoring relation. Then seminar group. Then lecture class). But also want to add a corrupting influence (for instance, in our fellowships).

For financial reasons, I had first suggested that the Ideal College take IOUs for all tuition and expenses, refusing to let Daddy pay for it (because this would increase their sense of responsibility and permit education to pay for itself instead of begging for help all the time). Still, I’d also add that money is given to students selectively. Therefore, it invidiously forces faculty to pick and choose (i.e., become more judges and evaluators and discriminators, making it impossible to love some students’ dependency) over goodwill, love, approval, etc., on their teachers, who pay him for being “good.” This contaminates the relationship—either no money should be given (rely on IOU), or it should be shared equally by the government (but there would have to be exams and rejections). This parallels my strong feeling that teachers should not grade and examine, but the outside examiners should, a la Swarthmore and the University of Chicago and Blackfoot Indians (where parents rarely punish; instead, the “punisher punishes”). This parallels ABEPP state licensing boards, national diplomas like the American College of Surgeons, etc. (Lowry, 1978)

Such an approach cleanses the teacher–student relationship, giving total self-responsibility to the student and supplying a realistic validation mechanism—a firm, unyielding, dependable, unchangeable, unbribable, and un-seducible reality such as a profit and loss statement in business. This would also permit moving from one campus to another, which is sensible and impossible today. The primary thing it would do to the teacher–student relationship is to make the teacher only a helper. It may be of interest that Maslow’s suggestions in this discussion are almost the same as those made by Carl Rogers, first presented in 1952 and then published in 1957 (Rogers, 1957). During his time at Brandeis, Maslow never attempted to actualize his ideas about an ideal undergraduate college.

Furthermore, he disagreed with Rogers regarding educating graduate students:

Just read Carl Rogers’s paper on graduate education in psychology. Excellent, but wrong to some degree. He is recommending precisely what we tried at Brandeis. But unfortunately, it hasn’t worked for half the students, the loafers, passive ones, wise guys, timid cowards, dentists, and union-card types. (Lowry, 1978, p. 208)

Maslow’s Blackfoot Epiphany

During his fieldwork with the Northern Blackfoot in 1938, Maslow became fascinated by their socialization processes for younger members of the tribe (Notes deposited in the Glenbow Archives). His fieldwork with the Siskia, the Northern Blackfeet tribe in which he conducted fieldwork, was a significant source of his advocating for the idea of synergy.

He admired Blackfoot socialization practices, which provide the child, particularly the boys, with a model for behavior combined with opportunities to develop autonomous behavior. Thus, it is possible that Maslow translated the Blackfoot socialization process into the idea that graduate PhD students should be as self-sufficient as possible.

Maslow’s experience with the Northern Blackfoot tribe was imprinted upon him. From this experience and his work with Ruth Benedict, he became enamored with the explanatory strength of the concept of synergy (Smith & Feigenbaum, 2013). Tony Sutich, the prominent humanistic psychologist, wanted to publish Maslow’s summer field notes, but Maslow thought they were so important he wanted to publish them himself (Lowry, 1978). He never did. Many notes were eventually deposited in the Archives of Psychology. He published several articles on synergy, including “Toward a Psychology of Being” (Maslow, 2013) and “The Furthest Reaches of Human Nature” (Maslow, 1971). The synergy theme was followed up in Maslow’s writing on Eupsychian management (Maslow, 1965).

Maslow and Graduate Education

I now present an extended discussion of Maslow as a mentor of graduate students. Maslow was one of the founders of the Graduate School at Brandeis in 1953. He taught in the psychology department from 1951 to 1968, when he left. Maslow developed close personal and intellectual relationships with several students during this period. Arthur Warmouth, Richard Lowry, Debbie Tanzer, Joel Aronoff, and John Solin were among them. A survey of dissertations (ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, n.d.) from 1957 to 1970 indicated that students in the Department of Psychology produced approximately 70 dissertations. Maslow was the lead advisor on around six dissertations. His relationship with many of the graduate students was mainly fractious (Feigenbaum, 2020; Hoffman, 1988; Lowry, 1978).

Many graduate students came to Brandeis to work with Maslow and were attracted by his humanistic psychology perspective. Several were interested in topics in humanistic psychology but ended up with other advisors. Maslow believed that graduate education should follow an apprenticeship model in which the students promulgated a faculty member’s research (Lowry, 1978). This approach to graduate education can be positively interpreted as synergistic or benevolent narcissism. However, it might also be considered exploitative. The students’ problem was that Maslow provided little structure or guidance; he viewed many students as lazy and overdependent. Another reason for the lack of dissertations in Maslow’s footsteps was that he was no longer an empirical psychologist focusing on data; instead, he became closer to being a philosopher than a psychologist.

The most significant dissertations produced in U.S. universities that reflect Maslow’s ideals were not done in the Departments of Psychology but in other areas, such as management, nursing, theology, and education. Only a few dissertations were produced in mainstream psychology departments (ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, n.d.). The majority came from graduate schools that were ideological and humanistic, such as Saybrook, the California School of Integral Studies, and those that catered to adult students and were nontraditional, such as the Union Graduate School and Fielding Graduate School. Maslow had always remained an outsider in “traditional” psychology departments.

Whereas Maslow was relegated to teaching primarily at Brandeis and lecturing throughout the United States, Rogers was an active clinician and an innovator in counseling and group dynamics. This led to a more extraordinary legacy of dissertations related to his viewpoints than Maslow could develop.

Why was there a gap in how Maslow taught and mentored undergraduates and graduate students at Brandeis? Maslow was considered a fine teacher by his students at Brooklyn College until around 1968 (Hoffman, 1988). One hypothesis is that he viewed his undergraduates as still in the throes of “identity” formation. Thus, he saw them as needing external guidance and emotional support.

Maslow’s position on the key to his teaching of undergraduates is expressed in many of his articles including his journals. In sum, he believes that the former involves helping the student self-identify toward self-actualization, awareness, and acceptance of the preconscious and the nonverbal, whereas the latter requires focus on the content, method, and preparation for research to become a scientist. His more general beliefs about education are expressed in his article in the Harvard Educational Review (Maslow, 1968a). Nevertheless, he maintained the explicit assumption that the graduate students had already found their way down the road to what he described as a professional identity. They no longer seek hand-holding and just want assistance to become more proficient, skilled, and knowledgeable, professional scientists.

He assumed that the graduate students who came to Brandeis would be self-directed and not need paternal guidance nor motherly emotional support. His diatribes against the graduate students are well documented (Hoffman, 1988; Lowry, 1978). Maslow indicated that other faculty members were disappointed with the graduate students’ quality, but Maslow’s deprecation was extreme. The following quote is only one of the many that appear in his journal,

1:30 a.m.—can’t sleep. Once I started thinking about the grad students, I became very angry and woke up, and that was it. Sleeping pill was now beginning to work. I was disgusted with their avoidance of work and commitment, passivity, flabbiness, and impotence. Their ingenuity and brass, slipping between the cracks in the faculty front, like children setting off mother against father, make me angry and contemptuous. Our values are so far apart now that there can’t be any friendship, so I get cool and distant and want little to do with them. (Lowry, 1978, p. 220)

Maslow primarily viewed graduate students as helpers in advancing his work—the apprentice learning from the master whose personal identity has already been formed. For example, he stated,

I want no one around but helpers. I don’t want to help anyone, guide, therapize, or support, have discussions and heart-to-heart talks, hold hands or spend one minute more with a helper than the work requires. Should be someone who can work alone, not like A., etc. (Lowry, 1978, p. 184)

Maslow’s position toward graduate students was not unique. Many professors share(d) similar views. However, for Maslow, from a humanistic psychology perspective, the fit between his attitude and humanism was poor.

The most explicit expression of Maslow’s view of graduate education is found in the graduate memo of 1957, submitted to Brandeis’s Graduate Council. This memo begins by posing excellent questions: To what extent should a graduate school’s personnel and organization rest on students’ needs? Is a true University Graduate Department primarily scholarship-centered? Are we primarily intellectual workers interested in advancing knowledge, or are we primarily teachers? Maslow partially answers these questions by concluding that “good teaching can be done only by scholars active in the work of their field” (Maslow, 1965). He discusses the department’s educational goals and the types of research in which the faculty should engage, which is best summarized in the concept advanced by Alfred Adler, “social interest,” a study that can be deemed socially helpful and educationally worthwhile. The latter part of the document dramatically changes course. It reveals the Maslow of William Graham Sumner—representing Social Darwinism combined with an evocation of a faculty–student “padrone” relationship.

According to Maslow (1965), an aspirant psychologist is responsible for his education, and the faculty should refuse to shoulder this responsibility. In a sense, Maslow did not consider oral characters, overdependent people, and passive, flaccid, authoritarian and masochistic people responsible. Examples are people waiting to be educated, seduced, or “raped.” Maslow also assumed that graduate students identify with authority rather than resist authority. Therefore, they should not feel alienated or hostile to authority. In the same vein, he assumed that the faculty should function as models to aspirant psychologists. Finally, he believed that students should not be blocked in the path of becoming working scientists. Their interest should not be in opposition to the defining interests of the working scientists. An aspirant psychologist can learn by helping, looking over their shoulders, and running alongside the working veterans, by making themselves useful, and should avoid the unwarranted draining of veterans’ time.

According to Hoffman (1988), Maslow’s relationship with his graduate students was perhaps his only absolute failure, including his attribution of their “poor” performance to characterological shortcomings. He deemed them unmotivated, overdependent, and not sufficiently deferential to him. Hoffman says that the real gripe of his doctoral students was one they could not express directly to him for fear of repercussion. Therefore, he no longer conducted empirical research and offered them only the most cursory direction. By the mid-1950s, Maslow had decided that empirical research would draw valuable time and energy away from his quest to transform the psychological enterprise’s very nature (Hoffman, 1988).

The comparative psychologist that Maslow was in the 1930s, the empirical researcher of dominance and submission, insecurity and security, and sexuality, among other topics, had morphed into a “continental philosopher” in the last years of his life. As St. Paul did with Christianity, his life was devoted to spreading the “good news” of humanistic and transpersonal psychology.

Experience and Experiential Education

Both Maslow and Rogers strongly believed in the effectiveness of experiential education as a learning tool. However, Rogers and Maslow differed from the leading educational philosopher John Dewey regarding the relationship between experience and the educative process (Dewey, 1938). Dewey’s early position on the relationship is not directed at self-growth, which is the case for both Maslow and Rogers. Still, it emphasizes the transmission of knowledge and how it should be transmitted. Dewey raises the issue of “What is place” and the meaning of subject matter and organization within the experience. How does subject matter function? Is there anything inherent in an experience that tends toward progressive organization?

In “Experience and Education,” Dewey (1986) further states that he assumes there is one perpetual framework of reference: the organic connection between education and personal experience amid all uncertainties. He considers the new philosophy of education as committed to empirical and experimental philosophy. He maintains that the belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educating. He further adds that experience and education should not be directly equated, mainly because some experiences are miseducating. In his view, any experience miseducates if it has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience. He also suggests that a given experience may increase a person’s automatic skill in a particular direction and yet tend to land him in a groove or rut, further narrowing the field of additional experience. An experience may be instantly enjoyable and yet encourage the formation of a lazy and careless attitude. Similarly, experiences may be so disconnected that they are not linked cumulatively to each other while individually agreeable or exciting. In Dewey’s view, every experience is a moving force. Its value can only be judged based on what it moves toward and into (Dewey, 1938; Dewey, 1986).

For example, Dewey (1986) wrote, “Every genuine experience has an active side which changes in some degree the objective conditions in which experiences are had” (p. 34). He suggests that experience alone is insufficient. Simply giving pupils new experiences is not enough; one must see to it that students have more remarkable skills and ease in dealing with things with which they are already familiar. In addition, he suggests that it is essential that the new objects and events be related intellectually to earlier experiences. There should be advances made in conscious articulations of facts and ideas. He considers connectedness in growth as his constant watchword, emphasizing intellectual development.

The experience of Maslow and Rogers tends to be the accommodated experience of an individual rather than an interactive one with the external world. For Rogers, experience is commensurate with self-learning. Maslow’s guide for using experience was through T groups and classes modeled after his 1963 one at Brandeis.

Analyzing Carl Rogers’s Ideas

Carl Rogers’ Student-Centeredness

Carl Rogers was the ultimate exponent of student-centered learning and an educational reform activist (Rogers, 1967, 1968, 1969). His educational philosophy bears an almost complete resemblance to his client-centered therapy approach. However, it is restricted in scope because Rogers indicates that the only form of learning is self-learning, and the only subject for learning is the self. His views on teaching and education as expressed strongly in two articles in the Carl Rogers Reader (Kirschenbaum & Henderson, 1989) are discussed as follows.

The third primary source of Rogers’ writings on education appears in his book, Freedom to Learn (Rogers, 1994), which presents his version of student-centered education to teachers and administrators at the elementary school level. The book’s general aims (Rogers, 1994, p. xxiii) are as follows:

1. Help teachers foster a climate of trust in the classroom;

2. Encourage a participatory mode of decision-making in all aspects of learning, a role in which students, teachers, and administrators each have their part;

3. Help students prize themselves, to build their confidence and self-esteem.

4. Uncover the excitement in intellectual and emotional discovery, which leads students to become lifelong learners;

5. Develop in teachers the attitudes that research has shown to be most effective in facilitating learning; and

6. Help teachers grow as persons and find rich satisfaction in their interaction with learners.

As Maslow did not address elementary school education directly, a detailed comparison with him is hardly possible. Therefore, I will only make a few comments on Rogers’ positions.

Much of what he writes is a repetition of the standard positions enunciated by the progressive education movement, beginning with John Dewey, emphasizing learning through active learning. It misses the importance of the civic and the necessity of a democratic society, where the individual’s growth habits can flourish. My second major criticism is that Rogers is not genuinely student-centered. He does not address the needs of a wide range of individuals with different learning modes and a differential need for structure in the classroom. An alternative approach to the one taken by Rogers is to find out as much about the student as possible, what excites the student to learn, only having a tentative curriculum for a class, individualizing as much as possible, and finding out what would be best for each student.

Without this, it is not easy to judge what content would be most efficient in “lighting the learning lamp.” Learning to master a subject matter also may allow more autonomy for a student and create a feeling of efficacy, which can increase self-esteem. Rogers’s position toward teaching is monolithic and can be considered “radical.”

Two articles support the abovementioned position. They are “Personal Thoughts on Teaching and Learning” (Rogers, 1957) and “The Interpersonal Relationship in the Facilitation of Learning” (Rogers, 1967). Rogers’s (1957) statements and my comments are listed below.

1. “My experience has been that I cannot teach another person how to teach.” This may have some validity depending upon the meaning of the word “teach.” However, one can still act as a model for other teachers, as Rogers did himself.

2. “It seems to me that anything that can be taught to another is inconsequential and has little or no significant influences on his behavior.” Any validity of this statement depends on the meaning of consequentiality and is based on the value of what is deemed significant.

3. “I realize increasingly that I am only interested in learnings which significantly influence behavior.” Quite possibly, this is simply a personal idiosyncrasy.

4. “I feel that the only learning that significantly influences behavior is self-directed, self-appropriated learning.” The key here is what he means by self-appropriated. Does this open the door to learning about the humanities, sciences, and the social sciences? Are there learnings beyond the cliched question of the 1960s, that is, “What does it mean for me?”

5. “Such self-discovered learning, a truth that has been personally appropriated and assimilated in experience, cannot be directly communicated to another.” (A synopsis of Rogers’s privileged self-argument is still being debated in the philosophy of mind).

6. “As a consequence of the above, I realize I have lost interest in being a teacher.”

7. “When I try to teach, as I sometimes do, I am appalled by the results, which seem a little more inconsequential because I find that the teaching appears to succeed. However, when this happens, I find that the effects are damaging. It seems to cause the individual to distrust his experience and stifle significant learning. Hence, I feel that teaching outcomes are either unimportant or harmful” (I would consider this proposition if Rogers provided examples of his teaching succeeding, the results being damaging, etc.)

8. “When I look back at my past teaching results, the results seem (a) the same—either damage was done or (b) nothing significant occurred.” This is frankly troubling. (What is also worrisome is that student-centered Rogers provides no evidence of his conclusion from the viewpoint of his students.)

9. “Consequently, I realize I am only interested in being a learner, preferably learning things that significantly influence my behavior” (so teaching is only for the teacher’s benefit). There are a few other maxims whose implications are summarized as follows:

10. (b) We would do away with examinations. They measure only the inconsequential type of learning;

11. (c) We would do away with grades and credits for the same reason;

12. (d) We would do away with degrees as a measure of competence, partly for the same reason. Another reason is that a degree marks an end or a conclusion on something, and a learner is only interested in the continuing learning process; and

13. (e) We would do away with the exposition of the findings, for we would realize that no one learns significantly from conclusions.

14. As for (a) through (d) above, many exponents of education would agree to and have been mainstays in “experimental colleges” such as Goddard for many years. I do not understand the meaning of (e): Conclusions are the natural product of cognition.

The text, “The Interpersonal Relationship in the Facilitation of Learning” (Rogers, 2001) restates Rogers’s client-centered therapy philosophy. The teacher is seen as a facilitator of learning mainly through the relationship with the student. This relationship is characterized as one where the teacher is genuine, warm, empathic, and prizes the student.

It is striking that this approach, which can be seen as student-centered, is actually instructor-centered. There is no interpersonal relationship. Nothing is said about the reciprocal character of the student. Is she genuine (see Riesman) or empathic? Does Rogers assume that the student will take the other’s attitude through imitation or identification. Rogers did not believe in the power of a transference relationship in psychotherapy.

A third article is titled, “A Plan for Self-Directed Change in an Educational System” (Rogers, 1967). He planned to flood a system with facilitators to generate T group experiences with the teachers and administrators. This appears more suited for a small progressive school than a complicated educational system. One cannot imagine this in Lubbock, Texas. One cannot imagine overworked teachers applauding the time and effort necessary to become “sensitized.” Rogers had no direct experience as a teacher in a public school.

I now provide two recent counterexamples of Rogers’ position from my experience. I am sure that the reader can give many examples on their own. First, I took a short course in which I was introduced to the work of Jorge Luis Borges. Based on this, I have seen the world around me from a new and meaningful perspective. I was also fortunate enough to take a course on the rise of Nazi Germany. Consequently, I am more sensitized and more politically active on the dangers of totalitarianism in the United States and elsewhere. My psychological space has been infused. Extrinsic learning can be assimilated into internal learning. There is no boundary between the two; neither is separated by an impermeable boundary.

It also seems reasonable that “Know thy self” can be achieved through extrinsic learning of tremendous and not-so-great literature, ranging from Shakespeare to Dostoyevsky to any novels on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

The Other Side of Rogers: Education and Community

Rogers appears to have considered the importance of ethos in a classroom more as an essential factor in learning than Maslow did. The definition of ethos here approximates the following: Ethos describes a cohort of people’s fundamental values.

Several articles criticize Maslow for focusing on actualization in relation to an individualistic culture and not analyzing the process in collectivist cultures (Triandis & Gelfand, 1998). Relating to the two ideal types, one might ask whether the educational views of Maslow or Rogers would function differently in a collectivist culture. Perhaps, a question of greater magnitude is whether and to what degree can self-actualization, the whole person, or the educational views of Maslow and Rogers possibly function within a highly totalitarian state. What impediments would there be for their educational ideas to be actualized?

The views of Maslow and Rogers on higher education are difficult to categorize. Perhaps it is helpful to focus on their opinions using the dichotomy of general education versus professional education. These two categories are employed by Richard M. Alpert. According to Alpert (1980), a “professional” is someone who had, through a difficult and lengthy process, “mastered an esoteric, but useful body of systematic knowledge” (p. 499). It also means “autonomy over establishing standards of performance and making judgments about quality, and control over the selection and training of new members” (Alpert, 1980, p. 499). In Maslow’s view, graduate education is geared toward producing professionals, whereas the role of undergraduate education is general education.

The views on what general or liberal education should be, Alpert claims, resolves into two strands: a “liberal” one and a “conservative” one. Both Maslow and Rogers sought to restore a broad educational experience in which students avoided specialization, advocated a fixed curriculum, and studied a common core. “Faculty were not to be professionals in the sense of being grounded in a single discipline and dedicated to research. They were, instead, to be generalists in command of a broad area of knowledge and dedicated to the world of ideas” (Alpert, 1980, p. 50). The liberal form sometimes included a required curriculum in the first 2 years. However, its central idea is that the students should develop an education suited to their individual needs and interests.

In the conservative approach to general education, authority rested on the intellectual discipline’s expertise and the faculty that taught it. By contrast, for the liberal version, “authority was based more on the faculty member’s relationships to the student’s academic progress and the teacher as a concerned, empathic mentor and guide” (Alpert, 1980, p. 501).

Maslow adopted a hybrid position regarding Alpert’s dichotomy that bifurcated his undergraduate and graduate education views. His undergraduate teaching views included a student-directed curriculum and degrees of empathic involvement while still maintaining a disciplinarian expert’s authority. As indicated, his personality theory classes are prime examples of this approach. By contrast, his approach to graduate education in psychology was an apprenticeship model where the student was an apprentice to the master research mentor who did not promote close personal relationships with their students.

The view of Rogers on education was homogeneous. He made no distinction in how a student was learning at any level, whether in elementary, undergraduate, or graduate schools. The moving force was the empathic relationship between two learners engaging in a common education process. The liberal position on general education minus a fixed curriculum fit Rogers’s view.

In this review of Maslow’s and Rogers’s educational philosophies, Rogers’s position has always been clear and consistent. The views of Rogers are prototypic, student-centered, and student-directed. Rogers was an active educational reformer attempting to implement his ideas into the school system (Rogers, 1968). By contrast, Maslow was only somewhat student-directed; his student-directed views were for undergraduate students. His advocacy of T groups for undergraduate education is an example of this. For graduate education, he was primarily instructor-centered, seeing the students as assistants to the professor. However, Maslow correctly identified several significant deficiencies in higher education, emphasizing grades and credits. He would have been a welcome member of today’s fraternities, calling for reform in higher education.