Prior to being allowed to enter the profession, prospective teachers should be asked to talk with a group of friendly students for at least half an hour and be able to engage them in an interesting conversation about any subject the prospective teacher wants to talk about.
Every single major push in education has made it worse and right now it's really bad because everything we've done is de-humanizing education. It's destroying the possibility of the teacher and the student having a warm, friendly, intellectual relationship.
If we had in this room a hundred teachers, good teachers from good schools, and asked them to define the word education, there would be very little general agreement.
Running a school where the students all succeed, even if some students have to help others to make the grade, is good preparation for democracy.
We can pay teachers a hundred thousand dollars a year, and we'll do nothing to improve our schools as long as we keep the A, B, C, D, F grading system.
There is plenty of competition in a Glasser Quality School in that there is winning but no losing.
