8.2.2 External Conditions and Factors of Education (Personality Formation) Human beings live in an environment full of diverse stimuli (factors) which
influence them from the outside, and they also provide their feedback
accordingly. The environment people live in is both of a social and natural
character. Altogether, they form the environment.
Factors of the environment:
a) In the natural environment, one is influenced by natural phenomena
and products, phenomena and material objects created by people as well
as demographic, geographic and economic conditions.
b) The social conditions are created by people and their mutual relations.
People are surrounded by a wider and narrower social environment. It
materially stimulates and influences the development of human
personality.
J. Horák and Z. Kolář (2004) include the following factors as social conditions:
political, economic, cultural and legal arrangement of the society;
prevailing values steering the human behaviour;
social structure of the society;
prevailing lifestyle and traditions;
social groups.
The said factors apply both to small and large groups. Hence, some of them
have a direct and immediate effect (e.g. in family) or they have a mediated
impact (social conditions in the society).
The term ‘educational environment’ is a wide complex of intentionally
organised and accidental effects and stimuli from the school, family and various
organisations which stimulate sound and universal development of man
endowed with skills and relationships.
The broader approach to the educational environment includes a set of
external conditions (social, economic, democratic, ethnic, etc.) which determine
the outcome of education and instruction through the place-related
characteristic (urban, rural, industrial, agricultural environment), through the
57
type of the subjects involved and through the objectives, content, forms,
arrangement and intensity of educational processes.
