Each time I visit such a classroom, where the teacher is more interested in creating a democratic community than in maintaining her position of authority, I’m convinced all over again that moving away from consequences and rewards isn’t just realistic - it’s the best way to help kids grow into good learners and good people.
Interpretation
Creating a democratic classroom fosters better learning and personal growth.
Alfie Kohn advocates for a teaching approach that prioritizes a democratic community over traditional authoritative methods. He believes that by moving away from conventional systems of rewards and punishments, teachers can nurture students who are not only better learners but also develop into morally strong individuals.
In practice
In a speech about modern educational practices, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of community in classrooms.
Some who support [more] coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled. However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled— those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good values, and so on. Control breeds the need for more control, which is used to justify the use of control.
Students should not only be trained to live in a democracy when they grow up; they should have the chance to live in one today.
Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.
In some suburban schools, the curriculum is chock-full of rigorous A.P. courses and the parking lot glitters with pricey SUVs, but one doesn't have to look hard to find students who are starving themselves, cutting themselves, or medicating themselves, as well students who are taking out their frustrations on those who sit lower on the social food chain.
If a child is off-task...mayb e the problem is not the child...maybe it's the task.
How can we do our best when we are spending our energies trying to make others lose - and fearing that they will make us lose?
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.
Are you a reader? If you aren't a reader, you might as well forget trying to be a writer.
To exterminate our popular vices is a work of far more importance to the character and happiness of our citizens than any other improvements in our system of education.
It gives me a very keen satisfaction that, after listening to my blather all those years, former students are now seeing that I wrote a book, that I did have it in me.
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
For the future, primarily, we must educate people in science, engineering, technology and math.
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