Maturity in the context of the stages of human development in the history of modern European and Polish pedagogical thought

Abstract

Thinking about the lifelong education of a human being and the stages of his or her development has its roots
in modern European pedagogical thought, dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries, i.e. in the works of John Amos Comenius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. However, the 7-year periods in human development have been known in medicine, law and philosophy since ancient and medieval times. Among the successive stages of development, maturity, most often linked to the reaching of sexual maturity, has always been singled out. However, according to contemporary psycho-pedagogical knowledge, we are dealing with the category of maturity at the many stages of human development, and in the various areas of the functioning of man. J.J. Rousseau first stated that in the Second Book of Emile, or On Education in 1762, writing that each age has its own perfection, the kind of maturity typical of itself. In the 20th century this proposition became more and more popular owing to research in the field of pedology and empirical psychology