“Blank Slate” or a Natural Predisposition: The Necessity of Clarifying the Term “Human Nature” in the Context of Modern Educational Practice Studies

Modern sociocultural changes are running rapidly, are constantly provoking new requirements that society and labor market impose on a person and his/hers education. As a result, people are largely frustrated with their own expectations and the expectations of society. The value of education increases permanently, and the study of educational practices has become more relevant than ever. In this regard, one of the main challenges that social and human sciences face is the challenge of understanding human nature - this will make educational practices as adaptive as possible, capable of adjusting to this nature, and, possibly, changing it. This issue is deeply reflected by the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker in his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. His main idea is that human nature cannot be understood as a blank slate and must be studied in the context of the evolutionary baggage of humanity. Pinker states that it is impossible to ignore the achievements of the natural sciences, such as neurobiology, in explanation of human behavior as an individual and as a member of society. It should be noted that certain contradictions in the definition of the concept of human nature exist in Pinker's work and in the works of his colleagues. Some researchers understand human nature as a part of the biological world opposed to the human culture or society. Others see it as a collection of properties - biological, social, moral, etc. - that distinguish human beings from other species or objects in the world. As a result, Pinker suggests a definition of human nature, according to which even extreme cases of human nature's “plasticity” reveal important innate limitations. Based on that definition, the following hypothesis can be formulated: in terms of the blank slate theory (social constructivism) and taking into account the evolutionary theory, we can say that a human being is neither a blank slate, nor a sheet with a pre-typed text. Human nature can be compared to a linguistic test, in which information is partly given and partly skipped for sentences to be completed. In relation to educational practices, it means: 1) the necessity of developing core principles of a practice, taking into account the above mentioned innate limitations of human nature; 2) the systematization of these principles in such a way that they adapt to those plastic individual traits which determine the person's ability to assimilate information.

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