What Makes Something a “Human Need”?

We’ve spent a few days recently thinking about what makes something a human need.

Are human needs just what we need to physically survive- air, water, and food? Do things that are essential for mental well being- love, a feeling of belonging, self esteem- also count as needs?

Students began their investigation by sorting the following into “need” and “not a need”:

Once they finished their initial sort, students tried to create sub-categories within what they determined to be needs, and then discussed, first in small groups and then as a whole class, the following questions:

• If someone were to do this same activity 200 years in the future would their list of human needs look the same? What about 200 years in the past?
• Are our needs the same throughout our life? Do you have the same needs now that you had as a small child, or that you will have as an adult? 
• What makes something a “human need”? Is there a difference between “human needs” and “individual needs”? Who gets to decide what a human need is?
• Are human needs the same across the world? Would someone living in a different culture have the same needs as someone living in our culture?
• Can two people living in the same culture have different human needs?

Finally, we looked at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a framework for understanding how different kinds of needs can operate in our lives.

From here we hope to explore the status that something gets once labeled a need – does that mean that we have a right to it? If so, who has the obligation to fulfill that right?- and to consider whether or not we tell myths to fulfill some kind of human need.

We can’t wait to keep exploring!