We can’t value only what is easy to measure; measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning.
Contrary to what you think, your company will be a lot more productive if you refuse to tolerate competition among your employees.
To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
When we do things that are controlling, whether intentional or not, we are not going to get those long-term outcomes.
To feel controlled is to lose interest.
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?
What can we surmise about the likelihood of someone’s being caring and generous, loving and helpful, just from knowing that they are a believer? Virtually nothing, say psychologists, sociologists, and others who have studied that question for decade.
The race to win turns us all into losers.
If rewards do not work, what does? I recommend that employers pay workers well and fairly and then do everything possible to help them forget about money. A preoccupation with money distracts everyone – employers and employees – from the issues that really matter.
Those who know they’re valued irrespective of their accomplishments often end up accomplishing quite a lot. It’s the experience of being accepted without conditions that helps people develop a healthy confidence in themselves, a belief that it’s safe to take risks and try new things.
John Dewey reminded us that the value of what students do ’resides in its connection with a stimulation of greater thoughtfulness, not in the greater strain it imposes.
Few parents have the courage and independence to care more for their children’s happiness than for their success.
I realized that this is what many people in our society seem to want most from children: not that they are caring or creative or curious, but simply that they are well behaved.
Children don’t just need to be loved; they need to know that nothing they do will change the fact that they’re loved.
Similarly, parents who want to teach the importance of honesty make it a practice never to lie to their children, even when it would be easier just to claim that there are no cookies left rather than to explain why they can’t have another one.
The dominant problem with parenting in our society isn’t permissiveness, but the fear of permissiveness. We’re so worried about spoiling kids that we often end up over controlling them.
The story of declining school quality across the twentieth century is, for the most part, a fable,” says social scientist Richard Rothstein, whose book The Way We Were? cites a series of similar attacks on American education, moving backward one decade at a time.3 Each generation invokes the good old days, during which, we discover, people had been doing exactly the same thing.
Thomas Gordon said it well: “Children sometimes know better than parents when they are sleepy or hungry; know better the qualities of their friends, their own aspirations and goals, how their various teachers treat them; know better the urges and needs within their bodies, whom they love and whom they don’t, what they value and what they don’t.”4 In any case, we can’t always assume that because we’re more mature we necessarily have more insight into our children than they have into themselves.
Children aren’t helped to become caring members of a community, or ethical decision-makers, or critical thinkers, so much as they’re simply trained to follow directions.
Students get the message bout what adults want. When 4th graders in a variety of classroomswere asked what their teachers most wanted them to do, they didn’t say, “Ask thoughtful questions” or “Make responsible decisions” or Help others.” They said, “Be quiet, don’t fool around, and get our work done on time.