In the book Education in Animal Kingdom, the French sociologist Little Noel believes that education is a biological phenomenon, which originated from general biological activities. He said: "Animals, especially slightly advanced animals, like people, are born with a potential education from heredity."
Percy Neng, a British educator, pointed out in the speech "People's Education" published at the plenary meeting of the Education Science Group of the British Association in 1923: "Education is a biological process from its origin. Not only all human societies have education, no matter how primitive this society is, even higher animals have low-level education.
Main viewpoints of biological origin theory
Educational activities exist not only in human society, but also in the animal kingdom. The emergence of human social education is a biological process, biological impulse is the main driving force of education, and human social education is the inheritance, perfection and development of animal kingdom. Education comes from animal instinct, which is the instinctive need of racial development.
The biological origin theory of education is the first formal theory about the origin of education in the history of pedagogy, which marks the beginning of the transformation of the origin of education from myth explanation to scientific explanation. The origin of education is attributed to the instinctive behavior of animals, which fails to distinguish the difference between human educational behavior and animal educational behavior, thus failing to grasp the purpose and sociality of human education.