Human dignity is intrinsic to every human being and is universally recognised as a fundamental right. Under a previous oppressive system, most South Africans had been denied basic human rights, including the right to human dignity. The constitutional negotiations of the 1990s abolished the apartheid system and constituted a sovereign democratic…

Although the concept of human potential accurately reflects central features of human nature, its current use perpetuates traditional myths of fixity, harmony, and value, calculated to cause untold mischief in social and educational practice. This book aims to demythologize the concept of potential. It shows its roots in genuine aspects of human…

The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners do not express the basic principle that would support a serious educational approach to prison administration. The crucial missing rationale is the concept of the inherent dignity of the individual human prisoner. This concept has certain basic educational implications,…

The author discusses the inhumane behavior of Americans towards illegal Mexican immigrants. The Christian acts of charity and love are stressed. (DE)

The increasing abstractness of our language makes it difficult to deal effectively with concrete social problems. (JH)

An analysis of the content, process, and purposes of common evaluation practices has revealed ten specific dehumanizing effects on participating students and educators. More humanistic, alternative evaluation practices have been suggested for each. (Author/BJG)

In order that English teachers may be important to themselves, important as teachers, and, through their behaviors, important to their community and to society, they must accept the challenge of being humanists. Ten characteristics describe humanists: (1) they revere life in all forms; (2) they have profound respect for the human mind and its…

According to this book of "psychological talks to parents and teachers," the American education system is a major social tragedy because it fails to recognize the potential of the individual. Individual differences are often ignored in the "assembly-line" approach to education and labeling children according to test scores is a way of dehumanizing…

Nine reports published in this volume study the uneasy coexistence of modern man and the complex society he has wrought. Man's apparent disorganized behavior is attributed to his inability to adapt readily to the charged pace of technological change. To combat the advancement of machine over man, he must, therefore, insist that moral and…

Some of the tactics elderly people use to sustain an honorable self-image, some ways in which society deprives aging people of dignity, and some suggestions for augmenting the dignity accorded old people in American society are discussed here. (Author)

The concept of dignity is developed from an ethological perspective. Special attention is given to innate, phylogentically programed behavior, the role of releasers, the importance of rituals, and the fact that "management problems" in institutions are often cries for dignity. (Author)

Without careful definition of "spiritual," hospice care will be little different in quality from that offered in acute and chronic care centers. Also discussed is the challenge to hospice care staff to defy trends in recent health care allowing staff rather than patients to determine what dignity means. (Author)

Having presented the opening article on behavior therapy, the authors now respond to 10 other writers' comments on their work by attempting to synthesize their critics' ideas with their own. (BP)

Student responses to a questionnaire indicate a popular hypothesis of human nature, derived from the works of Ardrey, Morris and others, which leads people to expect the worst from their fellows. To avoid negative consequences of this stereotype, these perceptions should be corrected in the introductory anthropology classroom. (Author/GC)