CC BY
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Вестник Томского государственного университета. 2021. № 467. С. 88-91. DOI: 10.17223/15617793/467/11
UDC 378+37.0
O. V. Tsiguleva, S.I. Pozdeeva
HUMAN CAPITAL HUMANITARIANIZATION IN THE CONTEXT OF AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH TO EDUCATION
The essence of the concept "human capital" is analyzed in the context of an anthropological approach. It is emphasized that the humanization of human capital is manifested within the framework of pedagogical anthropology since the content of education is interpreted as the continuity and basic property of human existence, its reality, cognition of one's own identity and destiny. The use of an anthropological approach in studies on human capital allows revealing the humanitarian content of human capital and its humanitarian characteristics.
Keywords: human capital; anthropological approach; pedagogical anthropology; education; humanization of human capital; humanitarian characteristics of human capital.
The human dimension, "humanity", is analyzed as a special valence of the content and methods of different subjects' activity. Humanity becomes an interdisciplinary object of numerous studies in the modern society [1]. It is quite obvious that such definitions as "human factor", "human potential", "human capital", in which the key word is "human", turn out to be an inexhaustible resource for the cultural and historical development of society and individuals.
Education and human capital are dialectically interconnected, since the time itself made these problems the main need of modern society. The transformations taking place in the education field make a person - as a carrier of human capital - a key figure. However, despite this fact, human capital is analyzed in terms of economic profit. The modern image of higher education focuses primarily on the needs of a post-industrial society, in which education becomes not a public value, but rather a market service characterized by various innovative transformations. The latter radically change the entire system of human relations with the world, greatly accelerate the pace of social development, and deepen the contradiction between the pace of social and individual development. The transition to an innovative development path is primarily associated with large-scale investments in human capital.
All this leads to a crisis of education, which is adopting a new system of information values and transforming into a crisis of human education. The inconsistency of modern education results with the set goals and current culture values, and the loss of spiritual and moral values are the primary source of crisis in education. This crisis leads to dehumanization of education and, consequently, of modern society the very carrier of these resources and capital - a person - falls out of the focus. The reproduction of human capital is reduced solely to the tools of the market economy in this case and thus reflects economic characteristics, leaving out the humanitarian content of the phenomenon of human capital. The anthropological meaning of the definition of human capital is ignored; the questions of how the capitalization of human qualities in terms of education differs from the formation of skills and knowledge, and what requirements are set by the anthropological approach to understanding the human are not raised. In other words, the system of education ceases
to be the main institution that forms proper human qualities, to define such integral anthropological characteristics as motivation, value system, and life strategies, and thus loses in competition to mass social practices and mass culture institutions.
The research aims to formulate the problem of human capital humanitarianization and its reinterpretation, and to highlight the humanitarian component as a key one in the context of pedagogical anthropology that reflects the human ability to search for their vocation through the prism of education. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the anthropological approach, which reveals the humanitarian characteristics and humanitarian content of human capital. In the latter, the basis is a person, and their cultural and historical development is the main component of education.
The modern conception of human capital is ambivalent. On the one hand, the realities of modern society in different spheres of life oblige us to recognize a person with their knowledge and potential as the main resource for the progressive development of society. On the other hand, with economic thought representatives that tend to positivism and pragmatism, there is a danger of dehumanization (alienation). Thus, the researcher V.V. Kraevsky [2] believes that human capital, as well as social, financial, and other types of capital, should be the object of socioeconomic sciences. Human research should be in the scope of pedagogy as a science.
Indeed, the original meaning of the definition of human capital as an economic category at the initial stage was limited to knowledge and a person's ability to work. Later, G. Becker transfers the concept of human capital to the micro-level, assessing the economic efficiency of received education for individuals themselves. In modern society, human capital is analyzed in the context of the highly developed economy of national production and services since these segments cannot do without highly qualified and educated specialists, on whom the state's competitiveness overwhelmingly depends. Production, transfer of knowledge (economy knowledge) and people with their intellectual potential come to the fore.
The American economist D. North notes that education should not be viewed exclusively in the context of economic research, that is, as material investments in the future. According to him, a significant part of this segment is aimed not only at investing in the development of a person and their
capital, but, in general, at investing in a person as a subject of moral and spiritual values, and cultural practices [3. P. 54]. The modern theory of human capital goes beyond economic thought, and more often the term human capital is considered not just as an economic category, but also takes into account non-economic components of a person. Therefore, human capital cannot return to the humanism stream within the purely economic approach.
The anthropological approach, representing the unity of science and worldview, contributes to returning human capital to the origins of humanism. This is completely impossible in the framework of economic research, despite the fact that human capital was initially the subject-matter of economics. In other words, it is impossible to solve the problem of human capital humanization outside the system of people's general ideas about the world around them and their place in it, of basic human values and beliefs.
The only source of all values and meanings of nature is a subject. A human, as a unique nature's creation possessing the highest cognitive ability, is aware that any event occurs for a cause and generates another event. Thanks to their human characteristics, qualities and properties, humans can not only comprehend these reasons, but also reach them as the ultimate goal of their human activity. Education provides for the formation of a person's agency as the ontological basis of all their subsequent personal acquisitions; this agency is the key element in human development. Therefore, the expression "person as a subject of education and of own life" is reflected in the conception of human capital. Consequently, today, the essence of the concept of human capital and its content should be revised and updated within the anthropological approach so that it can reflect a person's ability to self-develop and search for their vocation through the prism of education. Agency in anthropological terms is the ultimate form of manifesting a human's reality to others; it is associated with an individual's ability to turn their own activities into the subject of practical transformation, thus allowing a person to be a real subject of their own life [4].
The development of an anthropological approach to education shows that this approach is most developed in various concepts of pedagogical anthropology. In the analysis of the conceptual provisions of pedagogical anthropology, we relied on research by A.P. Ogurtsov and V.V. Platonov. They interpret a person as a unique, spiritually incomplete creation that integrates spiritual, physical, and mental principles, and is ready for any activity, for self-realization in this life activity [5]. Any innovation in the educational process should be compared not only with society's scientific and technical developments, and requirements (human capital as a branch of material production), but also with sociocultural ones (the capital of one's personal, spiritual, and cultural world). Since the anthropological approach involves the comparison of any knowledge about any educational processes, phenomena, and events with knowledge about a human's essence and nature, it accordingly contributes to the designing of the educational process following laws of human development [5]. In modern society, education should be presented as a person's achievement of new
forms of human development, and this development should contain the main component of human capital -education rooted in the historical genesis.
The outstanding German philosopher and pedagogy theorist J. Derbolav uses a non-classical direction of transcendental critical philosophy, which he considers as a doctrine of personality formation, to understand philosophical foundations of pedagogical anthropology.
Unlike Derbolav, the researcher E. Husserl does not identify pedagogical anthropology as a theory of self-fulfillment of an individual: he believes that transcendentalism as an epistemological attitude considers knowledge as a productive activity of human consciousness; therefore, we are talking about universal, i.e. transcendental, conditions of any possible experience, not about personology [6].
The essence of pedagogical anthropology, according to Derbolav, is identical to the theory of individual self-fulfillment, which occurs in several phases with the aim of achieving human existence.
The famous phenomenologist E. Fink, Husserl's assistant, examines pedagogical anthropology through the prism of existentialism, i.e. pedagogical anthropology reveals the basic structure of a person in the context of philosophical thought (self-understanding and self-interpretation of individuals' own lives and themselves) [7].
M. Langeveld, an adherent of the phenomenological approach to pedagogical anthropology, sought to interpret any pedagogical problem in an anthropological context, using various anthropological approaches. The key point of pedagogical anthropology, according to Langeveld, is the expression of the meaning of human existence in upbringing and education. Therefore, human capital humanitarianization is possible only in the context of pedagogical anthropology. The clarification of human essence is what will allow us to comprehend the pedagogical problems of a person's formation. Via the hermeneutical approach, pedagogical anthropology strives to reveal the essence of an individual as an autonomous person in the educational system, and this system must be brought in accordance with the individual's essence. Thus, the basis of this theory is the development of a person and the function of education in it. The individual's comprehension of their essence and purpose appears to be the future that contains the key problem of pedagogy - a person's formation and development. The manifestation of the essence of human capital is associated with the nature of a human as an independent person in the educational system and is directly caused by the using of the hermeneutical approach.
For our research in the context of human capital humanization, the key point is that, within the pedagogical anthropology framework, the essence and content of education are analyzed as the continuity and basic property of human existence, its reality, cognition of one's own identity and destiny.
According to the key views of pedagogical anthropology, value attitudes and personality traits are not innate; they are formed in the process of a person's activity, cultural formation and development, life
experience and communication acts [8]. V.I. Slobodchikov [9] notes that the role of the anthropological approach is steadily increasing in modern sciences that analyze various aspects of the educational segment. The main premise of the above is that the anthropological approach considers a human as a person existing in the harmony of natural, social, and biological being.
The researcher V.E. Klochko, within the anthropological approach, interprets the essence of education as a realized human reality in its entirety, including human subjectivity that transforms objects into subjects that have key significance and importance for an individual [10]. Analyzing the humanitarian essence of education as a special philosophical and anthropological category, as a kind of forming the human in a person, Klochko notes that education is a reality in which a person creates and improves themselves, and clearly understands the true meaning and value of their being. Consideration of an individual in the context of the anthropological approach and an individual's self-realization are manifested in the educational result of joint actions.
The basis of self-education is not an educational institution as such and not the educational process, but a person's self-development during the entire life. It is the spiritual, moral, and psychological values embedded in education that transform an individual's life into a reality that is happening now and is a link connecting a person and their world with other people.
Analyzing innovation culture (i.e. potential, experience, innovations in various areas of human activity) in the context of education, V.I. Slobodchikov notes that this culture transforms education as such and reveals its completely different meaning. Considering development as the main component of the essence of education, Slobodchikov understands innovative education as education in which a person, as a subject of culture and their own activity, transforms the surrounding reality and oneself, striving for self-development and self-improvement [9]. We interpret culture as a set of values and norms a person adopts and uses in their life activities and in interaction with other people [11].
Self-development is a person's fundamental ability to become and be a true agent of their own life, to turn their own life activity into an object of practical transformation. This means that the main - axiological, anthropological proper - determinant is included in the person's development. For a person, development is the reason, purpose and value, and sometimes meaning in life [11]. In the most general form, this special reality, in which it is possible to switch to the mode of self-development, should be designated as a spiritual reality.
The anthropological approach plays a key role in the formation of an individual's personality and agency since it focuses on the values of a person's authentic existence. A person understands these values as the meaning of their own axiological attitudes and preferences. In the context of the anthropological approach, a person forms their system of existential and axiological values and goals during their life time for a person is an active subject (and not an object) of their being [12. P. 150].
The anthropological orientation of human capital is aimed at building an educational process associated with an individual's need to participate in meaning-formation and
self-understanding [13], i.e. with the eventuality of designing innovative semantic constructs, dispositions, and personal values; education in this context is not just translation of knowledge, but rather interaction of various subjects. At the same time, the fundamental element in organizing the educational process is a person's meeting with oneself, discovery and realization of personal (human) capabilities, i.e. self-actualization, self-discovery, self-understanding, rather than a mere study of phenomena and objects. The key point is that, in the context of humanistic pedagogy, self-actualization is actions a person takes to form transitory values and attitudes that correspond to their life and a certain situation.
In his studies, Slobodchikov [9] notes that the actual need to solve the problem of the creation and development of the human in a person is caused not only by the global trends in modern education and society, but also by their transformation. It is about setting the key goal for education. Education should become a unified form of development of a person's basic abilities that allow this person to defend their humanity and that reflect the true, not substituting, essence of this concept. In this context a person is not a resource of social production but rather a subject of cultural and historical development.
Thus, human capital in the context of the anthropological approach considers a person as a basis and a key figure since all studies and theories in the humanities, social and economic sciences are accumulated around a human. This interpretation is based on a systematic approach to a human and their activities in various segments of society, to the abilities and capabilities of human existence [1].
Analyzing the essence of the concept of human capital in terms of the anthropological approach, we can speak about understanding an individual both as a resource and as a capital, which allows us to reflect the idea of the intrinsic value of a person oneself.
The use of the anthropological approach in studies on human capital researches makes it possible to substantiate the mechanisms of human capital formation through the prism of the interests of the subject of the educational process (a person) since the anthropological approach interprets education as the formation of an individual's personality, axiological attitudes and existential values; this approach focuses a person's attention on the products of their own activity and on the reinterpretation of these products.
Considering human capital as the result of education in the context of the anthropological approach, it is quite obvious that human capital in education manifests itself as new methodological principles and conceptual determinants [14], in which a person is the basis, and a person's cultural and historical development is the main component of education. Education helps a person to form agency as the ontological basis of all subsequent personal acquisitions [15]. Human capital in the context of the anthropological approach reflects a person's ability to self-develop, to search for their vocation through the prism of education. The key principles of the anthropological approach allowed us to reveal the humanitarian content and characteristics of human capital:
- interpretation of the definition of a human as a key category; all other categories are secondary, they expand the true essence, integrity, and uniqueness of a human
(M. Langveld, A.P. Ogurtsov, V.V. Platonov, V.I. Slobodchikov);
- human's ability of self-development, self-realization, self-expression, self-restoration, and self-actualization in the educational process (V.E. Klochko, G.N. Prosumentova, E. Fink).
Thus, the expansion of traditional methods of studies of human capital within the anthropological approach contributes to the humanization of the essence of the concept of human capital since it is this approach that appeals to a human and human agency as the main value and focuses on the values of a person's authentic existence - on what a person understands as the true meaning of their being. The analysis of human capital within the anthropological approach allowed us to reveal the humanitarian essence of human capital, to develop the concept of human capital, fill it with humanitarian content, and highlight its humanitarian characteristics.
In the authors' interpretation, human capital is considered as the integration of a human's personal,
spiritual, and cultural world, with a focus on the essential characteristics of human subjectivity associated with an individual's self-realization, self-development, and self-actualization, rather than as the capitalization of knowledge, skills, and abilities. This leads to a person's awareness of the importance of their ability to be a key resource and capital of society.
The humanitarian characteristics of human capital within the anthropological approach are:
- understanding of education as a space of meaning-making and meaning-realization;
- self-realization of an individual in their activities, i.e. a person's education in the world of culture created in mutual communications and joint human actions;
- orientation towards human reality in all its spiritual, mental, and bodily dimensions, i.e. a person is a subject of their own life;
- cultural and historical development of a person as the basis component of education.
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Received: 24 May 2021
Human Capital Humanitarianization in the Context of an Anthropological Approach to Education
Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta - Tomsk State University Journal, 2021, 467, 88-91. DOI: 10.17223/15617793/467/11
Olesya V. Tsiguleva, Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University (Novosibirsk, Russian Federation). E-mail: oltsiguleva@yandex.ru Svetlana I. Pozdeeva, Tomsk State Pedagogical University (Tomsk, Russian Federation). E-mail: svetapozd@mail.ru Keywords: human capital; anthropological approach; pedagogical anthropology; education; human capital's humanization; humanitarian characteristics of human capital.
