Learning Not to Learn

...There were some paralyzed and withdrawn children who had suffered damage that no normal school setting could undo...

...It means that they assume that there is a way of finding all things out...

...Yet in ways I had not expected, the schools and teachers were more inadequate than I had dreamed, and the contrast between the potentialities that lower-class Negro children enter school with and their failure by the time they reach high school is staggering...

...The teacher repeats her question and they turn her off, they give any arbitrary and stupid answer that comes into their head, without concern for its sense or meaning...

...I shot him in the head...

...Do we want to fail...

...I had a boy named Gary in my Kinder garten one year who never seemed to understand anything I asked him...

...But as the child grows older and more is expected of him in terms of real school skills, this avenue provides fewer and fewer rewards...

...I have edited her very frequent letter reversals—ilrg for girl, seh for she...

...In fact, the child had accurately perceived a certain similarity...

...She can't read herself...

...Daniel was a student in my first all-Negro class...

...D. of Teachers College and Title II director for the New York Board of Education, is referring to when she says that reading is "based on oral language, and disadvantaged youngsters never learn the art of listening...

...His mother insisted that he was terribly chatty at home...

...We demand that they pay attention and be observant at all times, and we then censure most of their observations...

...Our continuous attempt to undermine a child's confidence in the utility of his own judgments and perceptions is most dramatically illustrated in the first reading material with which he is confronted...

...At the first sniff of a question they take on that glazed look so common in ghetto children that many teachers and observers assume to be brain damage of widespread proportions...

...Why is it that they would soon appear so dumb, so maddeningly dumb, so completely incapable of handling the simplest school curricula...

...Not in the house...

...On one hand, I had rarely seen such uniform and neat handwriting...

...They do not expect answers...

...But if one spends much time observing normal classrooms and class room materials, it is clear that, in fact, this would be a radical departure...

...And, increasingly, in the black "soul" rhetoric they turn the tables and contend that if it is only a matter of style, why shouldn't their style be equally valid...

...He looks like my daddy...

...She had no time for children so I stop The fight and the fight was over...

...They probably have a disproportionately high rate of emotional and ego problems...

...In telling children no more insensitive than this child that their responses to life are constantly wrong, or at least irrelevant, when in fact the relevance and accuracy are often merely overlooked by the teacher, we do them a serious disservice...

...He throw me out the window cause some one wearing his clothes...

...Passive, withdrawn Regina, just five years old, a compulsively neat and "unresponsive" five-year-old, tells articulately of her place in the family order: My mother sometimes gets mad at the little kids, my sisters...

...she gives credit and blame evenly...

...Impossible...

...but as places to practice his newly acquired proper habits...

...She entices...

...What was unexpected was the kind of written work that the children handed in...

...Then they jump jump on the bed...

...This particular second grade group told me that while they were not "the dummies," they weren't the "good" class either...

...And the lower-class child does not have parents who know how to undo the school's damage in this area...

...She requires certain rote learning...

...Was I reading things into this work because of my own feelings for the children...

...During the reading of the primer available to that class (and 20 of these basal readers were the only books in that par - ticular room of about 35 children) he would, it is true, stare blankly at every other word as though he had never before encountered it...

...I took him with me to the Museum of Science and Industry along with my four-year-old son...

...Yet when he did not realize I was observing him, something in the style of his play, in his relationship with other children, in the vitality of his eyes made me suspect him of greater intelligence...

...How can children who feel threatened by the anger and passion around them feel secure among people who are so fearful that they dare not even deal with life symbolically...

...his communication remained almost monosyllabic...

...Instead of helping the child connect his own perceptions to a LEARNING NOT TO LEARN broader reality, andthis broader reality to schooling, the teacher is continuously sever ing all these vital intellectual connections to reality, connections that are crucial to gen eralization, abstraction, inventiveness, and creativity...

...In Kindergarten and to some degree in first grade, the minimal learning of rote rules, the dependence on superficial manners and neatness of lettering, and the ability to charm, may produce considerable success for some children...

...The child is eager for her attention, praise, and affection...

...But it requires an environment in which teachers do not constantly demand that children defend their existence and ignore their own perceptions...

...Few schools are so explicitly organized to do this as are our lower-class schools...

...She say no more...

...When the lower-class child (and this holds true, more or less, for white or Negro) has difficulty understanding his teacher, he is generally led to believe that this is his fault...

...This increasing gap shows up even in IQ scores...

...Nowhere else does a child depend less on his own "common sense," his own generalizations about life than in the ghetto classroom...

...Why does no one hug or kiss, hit or fight...

...As a result children rarely expect that they will or should understand what we teach them...

...I was the fourth teacher he had had that fall, and before the year was over he would have many more...

...They hug, flatter, enthuse, and praise...

...She is reminding him, even if gently, that this is not the place to deal with the meaning of what he actually sees or hears...

...Cause I never fight and never act bad...

...According to the school records he couldn't read or write and lacked `verbal ability...

...The existence of vital life problems can be an asset to such an intellectual effort...

...But suppose he had tried to...

...You just do that, right now...

...The child may be deprived of experiences we wish all children could have...

...Look at how his mother dresses him...

...While the scores of New York City's white children increased between the first and sixth grade, where they leveled off, Negro children's scores went steadily down after first grade...

...I'll bust that bogey ghost...

...They act bad...

...What makes us so afraid to talk of the truly powerful human situations...

...Walter, age four, frequently absent from school—the eldest of five children living in three crowded rooms with an aunt and a violent, often unemployed father—dictated to me: I said to mother, "Rebecca, can I go to school...

...And often she mistakes the immaturity of a four- or five-year-old's speech for some special ghetto language problem...

...And few lower-class schools are as destructively hostile to students as the all-black urban lower-class school...

...Of course, let us not forget, that very often she may also pinch him, shove him, or humiliate him to cover her own frustration or disgust...

...He's gone now...

...Oh black Black, she said I like you so do not run away a gend she cry happy On the verge of a highly literate language, struggling as all seven- and eight-year-olds do, with spelling, punctuation, grammar, and the sheer mechanics of handwriting, most of these second graders could tell an effective story and communicate a live experience...

...Neither spelling nor grammar counted, I assured them: "Tell me a story...

...Eddie, for example, handed in an essay consisting of partial phrases copied at random from the blackboard: Family How you sister uncle Brother see the ball From top to bottom his paper was "flawless" —perfect spacing, neat lettering, good margins and no erasures or cross-outs...

...The openly strict, no-nonsense teacher at least provides some easy-to-follow guidelines...

...Our starting point must be the child's own life...

...The child is obliged, out of his need for protection and security and out of family loyalty, to resist any entrapment that might immobilize him in dealing with his own environment...

...I stink...

...Perhaps the most serious intellectual shortcoming with which Negro children enter school is their failure to verbalize curiosity...

...The reforming, motherly type, anxious to like and be liked, poses greater dangers, especially to the very young child whom she most likely wants to teach...

...She may do this skillfully and introduce such "improvements" in a playful and imaginative way, thus believing that she avoids "imposing" upon a child's fantasies or explorations, or avoids implying censure toward his parents or their manners...

...The child of Harlem comes to Kindergarten or Headstart with special fears that go beyond the usual separation anxieties...

...He produced this story in the first week of my month's stay as his teacher...

...How can reading, symbolic expression, be useful to children if they are told that their own lives are not proper material, that they are too terrible ever to put down on paper...

...He gone...

...The teacher sees the play comer and the doll house not as centers of fantasy where a child can explore and reexamine his own experiences...

...For example, a booklet publicizing Headstart pointed to the "shocking" fact that poor city children do not know where milk comes from, because they typically answered: the store, a bottle, mother...

...It would seem obvious that the ghetto school should then go out of its way to welcome questions and to see that answers are j DEBORAH MEIER given...

...The reforming early-childhood teacher protests...

...She cannot replace his mother—however inadequate his own might be...

...The "answers" she wants from him—whether they be in the area of numbers, colors, health habits, or personal data—rarely make sense nor are they always consistent with his own view of reality...

...when I look out The window I saw a fight who do you think was fighting it was a child I did call my mother to stop The fight...

...By watching her movements for clues, by handling routines in standardized ways, and by knowing when it is safe to withdraw, a child can survive many years in such classrooms...

...Much has been written on the "Dick and Jane" syndrome...

...The teacher speaks in a familiar way and she understands his way of talking, even if he still talks baby talk...

...She says, "Stop...

...He's bright enough, but can you blame him...

...Because they throws things out windows...

...Others turn angrily on the teachers who failed to perform the Pygmalion magic...

...Thank you, dear...

...Were these, after all, the same children who, as we are told in popular magazines and journals of education, are nonverbal and lacking in adequate vocabularies, are defective in speech patterns and unable to speak in complete sentences, unable to relate an event in sequence and in need of structured drill in listening and noticing...

...He knows as a result what he dare say in school and what should be withheld, knows it unconsciously since the rules of the game are those he has already adapted himself to...

...Cynthia, considered the slowest child in the room, retold instead, in her own words, a story once read to the class...

...Yet in few places outside of lower-class schools will one find these techniques so refined and so universal as to replace all other kinds of learning...

...With the same list of "key" words sevenyearold Norburke wrote: My dady brought me some toys last night He went back out for more and had a fight...

...Because he's a generous father because his kids love him...

...They do not assume that life does or should make sense...

...We create the impression that what distinguishes the educated from the uneducated is a matter of style—speech patterns, social know-how, the use of certain lingo, good handwriting, proper spelling, letter-writing forms, etc...

...He knows first of all that his parents are afraid of the school, a fear they may express by timidity or belligerance...

...It was the beginning of an experience that was disturbing, fascinating, and revealing for me, for the same incongruities appeared over and over and over again—in schools with good physical conditions and up-to-date materials as well as in openly demoralized and uncaredfor schools...

...The class and racial bias is less critical than the exclusion of honesty...

...Gwendolyn produced the following: in The night time The stars are bright...

...We reinforce constantly by our own words and deeds a feeling that this whole educational enterprise is some vast test of their endurability...

...And if academic requirements are just certificates of competence in the white man's ways, then why shouldn't the black man control his own schools and issue his own documents...

...I be superman and hit the dark in the head and I run away...

...But in fact, she is both imposing and censuring...

...His home life is impossible...

...Yet such papers were never commented on by the teachers I met or the educators I had come across in my teacher training...

...But all the time they are dreading that day when we will ask that "innocent" question to test their academic ability...

...Such an exploration, an imitation of what the child sees and hears, is a prerequisite for later objective examination...

...The force behind such energy lies at least in part in the desire to make sense of and control life...

...Stevie no cry...

...In assuming such tight control over their spontaneity they also reduce the insights they can stumble upon, and many become particularly pedantic or superficial students...

...I knew it was wrong all along, so who cares what the teacher says about it...

...He tried to call the childs Mother...

...I suspect that even our more successful lower-class students are handicapped in competing with middle-class children because of the mental strait-jacket in which they have learned to function...

...But who will he call...

...He go...

...School, the one place where verbal and symbolic observations and explorations should be most appropriate, is probably the institution in which they are, in fact, most taboo...

...Most children soon put an end to the whole game, label themselves or the system "stupid," and drop out in one form or another...

...I don't need to learn the alphabet, my mother will buy me one soon...

...Everybody stink...

...TO ENABLE CHILDREN to go through the long course of learning required by contemporary society we have got to be able to call upon what Jerome Bruner calls "the natural energies that sustain spontaneous learning...

...Such disillusioned teachers then conclude that "being nice is a mistake...

...If we intend to create a one-class educational system in America we must begin to look at not only what we are failing to teach children, but what the school, albeit often unintentionally, is teaching them...

...I knew that these outpourings could not be explained merely as the result of inspired teaching...

...Don't judge me where it counts...

...To suggest that school should permit and encourage an honest response to life, literature, science, etc., as a prerequisite to a student's coming to understand and investigate it more thoroughly, seems elementary...

...But when the child got home the child went sleep...

...No matter which way she does it, the child does not lose sight of the fact that his own world is despised by his teacher as a wrong model, a bad model, or at the very least, an irrelevant one...

...Cause I aint got no clean clothes...

...Then he saw a star going by...

...I told my mother, "going to get a gun and shoot that bogey ghost in the head...

...He going to say there...

...Don't meddle...

...But there are many borderline children whom we push into becoming Garys...

...That's why he's a generous father...

...But she sometimes whips them...

...What that glazed look says is, "Leave me alone...

...If loyalty to their own kind and safety from sudden humiliations requires failing in school, then, in a sense, many children actually do "choose" failure...

...To the contrary, these youngsters expressed a precocious insight into what they saw and particularly what they heard...

...she demands very defined classroom standards of behavior...

...Even if the teacher understands the child's view of life, she sees her first and foremost task in presenting him with a different and superior view...

...or "Do you have ten brothers...

...This is not to deny that some of the Negro children's present psychological and environmental problems would not always be a handicap to developing their fullest intellectual powers...

...In succumbing to the school they have often been obliged to cut themselves off from their own world and their own experience and thus, since they cannot actually replace it with another, they dangerously limit their intellectual base...

...What has been most appalling in my ex LEARNING NOT TO LEARN perience of big-city schools is not a Dickensian 19th-century cruelty (which does exist in places) but the pervasiveness of a daily low-key atmosphere of tension, anxiety, and fear even in schools and classes with decent, unbiased and intelligent teachers (and even in schools with large proportions of white children...

...My mother likes them...

...the ice box...

...When I tell them to act right they act bad again...

...On the other hand, I was struck time after time in my years of teaching by the honest perception and apt phraseology of the many "Daniels" in our ghetto schools...

...She never whips me...

...It is evident from all this that most of these children first come to school sufficiently fit to receive a decent education, highly experienced in the ways of their world, and able to articulate their experiences...

...Are these the children whom Shelley Umans, Ph...

...It would be misleading to imply that it was the "norm"— but the number of such papers seemed out of proportion to what I would expect to find even in upper-middle-class white schools (and more fluent than my own children usually produced at the same age...

...I'm not scared in the dark anymore...

...In this unsupervised, nonschool environment he manipulated the instruments and figured out the gadgets with speed and accuracy, far outshining my own child...

...Gary's case was extreme...

...After six years it is more than two, and so on...

...But few teachers or experts in the field seem aware of the resources of language, ideas, and concepts that even the withdrawn children possess...

...Stanley, an exceptionally alert, sixyearold, explained to me during later tutoring sessions, "My mother will teach me to read, you don't have to...

...The teachers are not monsters, and for sheer fortitude and dedication in the usual sense many are indeed impressive...

...They know the mechanics of how to read, but that crucial reading explosion which middleclass children undergo during early adolesence never occurs for them...

...For when the teacher abandons him, as she must, he cannot follow her into that world of hers...

...Not all emotional problems, after all, need to be so completely transformed into learning blocks, and not all stability is conducive to learning...

...He never did talk to me...

...What we need to ask is whether the school reinforces children's angers and self-hatred or alleviates them...

...Now Stanley, over there," said a highly respected teacher to me as she figured out aloud which child I should tutor "stand up, Stanley...

...Meier, she's illiterate...

...But when I asked a bright middle-class child where milk comes from, she told me, "the mailman brings it...

...Bogey ghost, I'll bust your head...

...This "inarticulate" deprived child ended his very verbal tale with a grand flourish, smiling victoriously...

...when I went to school the next day I saw another fight I went to get The teacher but she could not come to stop The fight...

...The acceptable answer is supposed to be: "cow...

...she knew that her daughter was not culturally deprived or stupid—she had simply confused the milkman and mailman...

...They do not ply adults with incessant "whys...

...She is not puzzled by his habits or patterns of living and her value system coincides rather closely with that of his own family...

...The black power militants may overstate their case, but as teachers we have rarely demonstrated the respect for learning that might disabuse our students or their parents of such anti-intellectual notions...

...Yet I knew that my surprising kindergarteners would soon be labeled retarded, slow learners, unteachables...

...Even physically the middle-class child perceives things differently...

...If his parents are made uneasy and afraid, how can the child feel safe...

...Stanley, did your mother pack you a lunch today...

...I'm no good...

...But his fear and self-doubt when confronted by the representatives of the outer world—a world with which his mother had minimal contact—paralyzed him...

...Why is the word "like" all right but not "love" or "hate...

...He gone, gone gone now...

...But also no communication...

...He's in there now...

...The teacher had to work...

...They watch her face for clues, or withdraw into a complete fantasy world...

...Thus the teacher warns him, by her impositions, that there is danger in letting slip a spontaneous expression...

...Their disillusionment is guaranteed, but the extent to which they presume adult omnipotence and omniscience is educationally motivating...

...The End Emile wrote this short but effective version: In the night I saw a child looking at a Star the Star was very far away from the little girl way far from her and the first time She looked at it she was very happy and then I was happy too...

...Her values and those of his family are often quite different, if not in violent collision, and so are the manners by which these values are expressed...

...For others, fortunately, this apathy is only a mask worn at school...

...The following essays, for example, What you like to do were obtained in an average second-grade Plans for the weekend class which I taught for only two days...

...Then Dady went back out to get me some more toys for me and I will play with them on christmas day...

...The discomfort of his mother or father will visibly increase as the teacher or school clerk scolds them for ineptness in following directions, inadequacy in providing the proper equipment, etc...

...In our relations with children in school we display our greatest hypocrisy, demanding from children behavior we do not expect of ourselves or other adults...

...EDDIE WHO COPIED random words from the blackboard under the guise of doing an assignment on "My Family" may or may not be stupid...

...The End...

...Nor, in searching through rooms that I taught in for one- and two-day stands in Chicago's South Side ghetto school district did I see evidencethat other teachers obtained such superior written material...

...In all cases the children's resistance takes the form of withdrawing the best and most important intellectual potentialities they possess from school and teacher...

...Intelligence is only a weapon to use against others or to escape punishments...

...H H OW CAN WE EXPLAIN the fact that we create just the school environment that most exaggerates both the psychological and intellectual handicaps of lower-class children...

...This could cause him no pain, however, because there had never been any intention to produce meaning...

...When I foolishly explained this to his teacher, she gently turned to him and said, "Stanley, your poor mother won't help you...

...DANIEL WAS REPEATING first grade in a run-down Chicago school — big, dingy, half-lit rooms and old-fashioned screw-down desks...

...T T HE IMPORTANCE of these stories (which are by no means exceptions but in fact run-of-the-mill examples) goes beyond their literary quality or their psychological suggestiveness...

...He had, after all, figured out some things his teacher cared about and complied on the level of handwriting, neat margins, and accurate copying...

...On another occasion, Walter came and asked me to write down this variation on a familiar child's complaint: I'm afraid in the dark the bogey ghost going to take me out and throw me out the window...

...In later years when I worked as a regular teacher with pre-school and kindergarten children, who did not have to cope with technical problems of spelling and handwriting and with whom I developed a year-round relationship, the dictated stories I obtained were equally if not more impressive...

...But ersatz experiences are not a substitute...

...It should try harder than the average school to see that the small puzzling aspects of a child's environment are explored and explained...

...To avoid pain he learns to charm her, to con her with special techniques and looks, to manipulate her own desire to be liked...

...Yet despite these many exposes, the latest rash of reading readiness material is even more sterile...

...But years of experience as just such a teacher convinces me that children are remarkably skillful at playing our game...

...He is left with his -own...

...Thus she seeks to have him set the table properly, say "please" and "thank you," match place mats with forks and knives, learn proper phone manners, or appropriate ways to greet visitors...

...You know, Mrs...

...Or they ponder, weigh, rethink, clench their fists, bite their lips, until the teacher capitulates and supplies the answer or calls on another...

...Could I be mistaken...

...The teacher cannot substitute her "good world" for his, however much he might want to choose it...

...The children of lower-class homes are also no doubt handicapped by the intellectual shortcomings of their families—the lack of books and intellectual discussion at home, the absence of parents who could help with homework or explain the mysteries of science or literature...

...A quiet four-year-old living with grandparents, the child of an unwed working mother, asked me to write this for his Father's Day card: DEBORAH MEIER My grandfather is good...

...But this long-range task is hardly made easier if the child feels, at the outset, that his teacher hopes to erase as much as possible of the memories, associations, and skills with which he comes to her...

...After three years of contact with our "common cultural heritage" and exposure to middle-class norms in the schools, the gap grows to one year...

...The single fact of their existence forced me to reevaluate certain theories which I had always taken for granted and which form the basis of most current approaches to Negro lower-class children and their educational problems...

...The evidence is considerable that, although I prefer their kind of failure, even teachers who are gentle, kind, and pro-black fail...

...She's drunk, you know, half the time and there's a different father, if you know what I mean, every week...

...Many such children have merely substituted an imitation of middle-class style for learning...

...Ones ther was a girl who had a dog his name were black he ran away one day she was said and star to cry he mother came to her and say I seen your dog he is in the homes...

...But what I wanted, I stressed, was their own story, with or without these words...

...He's in the closet...

...He's a sweet boy...

...He's in the hospital now...

...LEARNING NOT TO LEARN To help them "get going" I had put four "key" words on the board: fight, child, night, and star...

...Yet how could one explain the above composition...

...Even if the teacher avoids open hostilities, or half-disguised antagonisms, she needs to recognize that her world, however enticing she might make it, cannot be "offered" as though a moral choice of value systems was involved...

...She says that "her children" really like her and learn "for" her...

...Unlike some recent critics (whose views I often share), such as Herbert Kohl and Jonathan Kozol, I doubt whether a conscious or unconscious desire for failure explains why so many teachers are inadequate, nor do I believe that racial or class bias, sadism, or laziness are the only factors present...

...I can't go...

...Others appear to go along only to betray their trusting teacher later by acts of theft or violence, acts which finally succeed in getting her to turn against them (as they knew she must...

...The teacher has difficulty understanding him—and she may even consciously avoid trying to understand him since she sees her task as altering his speech pattern, not adjusting to it...

...Some immediately retaliate with nasty words and insults...

...He would nod "dumbly" if I asked, "do you have two brothers...

...He decided whether the answer should be "yes" or "no" by looking at my face or at the expression on the faces of the other children...

...The more he wants or needs her approval, the more he finds this distressing and seeks some way of adapting himself...

...But even the most "stable" children are dropping way behind their middleclass white counterparts, some of whom are quite disturbed themselves...

...For the play corner was intended to serve a child's LEARNING NOT TO LEARN exploration of his life...

...She said, "no...

...She never gets mad at me...

...In some cases they DEBORAH MEIER lose access to their intellectual potentialities entirely, and a deep apathy pervades all their mental life...

...Suppose he had permitted the teacher to share something of his own life, his own perceptions...

...The white poor, incidentally, show scoring patterns similar to those of the black poor...

...So long as the reasons for psychological problems remain, so long as their environment is difficult and exhausting, some handicaps will exist...

...From the very earliest introduction into the school system our traditional approach to education creates for lower-class children in general, and blacks in particular, an alienation so severe as to make the school and teacher a relatively useless educational instrument...

...Still most were labeled "slow learners," a category the vast majority of black children fall into...

...In contrast, middle-class, favored children often have an exaggerated notion of the extent to which the adults in their lives have all the answers and ultimately can control and make sense out of everything...

...None of these techniques are DEBORAH ME'IER unique to ghetto schools, and the best description I ever read of them is John Holt's account of middle-class private schools...

...If he does she will be embarrassed, confused, indignant, horrified, tell him he is "wrong" or "not nice," or perhaps pretend not to hear him at all...

...Not—as it is the fashion to claim these days—because it is "too middleclass" but because unlike good middleclass education (whether at home or at school) it does not respect children's learning drives and experiential backgrounds...

...Stop throwing things out...

...Her mother was not alarmed...

...Negro boys become "literate" in the literal and traditional sense, but no more...

...The comparison between white and Negro boys is even more appalling...

...For what too many children who can least afford it are learning every day in our schools is a set of habits and defenses that rule out what we claim to seek...

...Their skill would soon be manifested in school only by their unusual success in tormenting each other and the authorities...

...In stressing social manners and confusing them with academic content, we often in effect denigrate the substantive stuff of education...

...How they wish we would lay off that stuff...

...He just cannot learn to read...

...I cried...

...Since most do not have any idea how they have failed, they often attribute their defeat not to an actual educational deficit but to naked racial bias (of which there is plenty...

...The teacher's criticism could only be leveled at the meaninglessness of his story...

...The environment of the classroom is familiar to him...

...so he saw a poilecman and tole him to take The child home but at first the child oh most cryed but when The poilecman said that he was going to take the child home the child did not cry...

...Some succeed at copying this style only to be disappointed when they later discover that being "mistaken" for an educated person is insufficient...

...After the first six formative years of life, Negro and white children are only about a half year apart according to the usual testing devices...

...They may be slightly behind in specific areas, but they have for their ages competent perceptual ability, skills, and linguistic know-how...

...SOME CHILDREN RESIST entirely the enticements offered by very kind and sensitive teachers...

...He begins to look for the answers in her face, becomes more sensitive to her moods, and gives up any attempt to understand either her logic or his own...

...Whil the star was passing by...

...Does the school require the child to use his limited energies to protect his ego from further assault, or does it leave him relatively free to use those energies creatively...

...He tries to remold himself...

...Not Stevie...

...Within the four walls of the school surely we should never give children reason to fear being curious or admitting confusion...

...There is only so much I can deal with in this school...

...He may not learn much, but he will not go to pieces either...

...I was reassured, however, by the reaction of friends to the stories and poems I showed them and by eventually encountering other teachers with drawers full of similar "evidence...

...One of the sophisticated long-range tasks of a good education is, of course, to introduce children to alternative approaches to life...

...He saw a child runing to...

...The easiest way to gain approval, if he can accomplish it, is to please her in areas of manners, style, and neatness...