Freedom to Learn
Carl Rogers
From the Introduction:
It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. Albert Einstein
Pg. 11 I was delighted to have made the acquaintance of a bright, sensitive young man who was so clearly being a person in the classroom, not a mask or a facade. And he was willing to learn from the children. He said that he had told the class that for him kindness was generally better than punishment, and that he didn’t intend to punish them, but try to help them. Then on a field trip to a museum, he felt tense and responsible for their behavior. After having clearly told the group that they were not to leave the museum room, one boy openly disobeyed. Mike went after him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and started to “blow off” at the boy. One of his group, a very timid girl, simply walked past the two and said, “Remember what you told us about kindness.” Mike was so startled, it cooled his anger.
(with regard to this young teacher)
It all sounded better and better. Then came the shocker. Mike said, “I’m leaving at the end of this school year. I feel I’m not doing what they are paying me to do.” Why? When parents are enthusiastic, children are learning at an accelerated rate, growth in personal maturity evident, why would he be leaving? “The school is adopting policies I can’t live with. There are to be, for example, stated punishments for every infraction of specified school rules, and all teachers are to use and enforce these punishments. Other policies are becoming more rigid, more bureaucratic. And besides,” he added, ” the other members of the teaching staff really don’t like what I am doing. I feel I am being paid to be authoritarian, a disciplinarian, and I can’t do that.”
Mike’s story is not the only one of its kind. The teacher who is human in the classroom is all too often a threat to other teachers, to administrators.
Pg. 49 I’ve come to realize that one must be secure in one’s own self-concept to undertake such a program. In order to relinquish the accepted role of the teacher in a teacher-directed program, one must understand and accept one’s self first. It is important as well to have a clear understanding of the goals one is endeavoring to work toward.
A Magic Wand
Pg. 135 Not long ago, a teacher asked me, “What changes would you like to see in education?” I answered the question as best I could at the time, but it stayed with me. Suppose I had a magic wand that could produce only one change in our educational systems. What change would that be?
I finally decided that my imaginary wand, with one sweep, would cause every teacher at every level to forget that he or she is a teacher. You would all develop a complete amnesia for the teaching skills you have painstakingly acquired over the years. You would find that you were absolutely unable to teach.
Instead, you would find yourself holding the attitudes and possessed of the skills of a facilitator of learning – genuineness, prizing, and empathy. Why would I be so cruel as to rob teachers of their precious skills? It because I feel that our educational institutions are in a desperate state; and that unless our schools can become exciting, fun-filled centers of learning, they are quite possibly doomed.
Pg. 137 I deeply believe that traditional teaching is an almost completely futile, wasteful, overrated function in today’s changing world. It is successful mostly in giving children who can’t grasp the material, a sense of failure. It also succeeds in persuading students to drop out when they realize that the material taught is almost completely irrelevant to their lives. No one should ever be trying to learn something for which one sees no relevance. No child should ever experience the sense of failure imposed by our grading system, by criticism and ridicule from teachers and others, by rejection when he or she is slow to comprehend.
Pg. 145 (On the comments students made about what they remember of their teachers and schools)
I am fascinated by the fact that these students make no particular mention of their teachers, but simply of the psychological climate in which they were enveloped. . . .
I often think the best facilitator was described by the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tse, 2500 years ago.
A leader is best
When people barely know he exists,
Not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
Worst when they despise him.
But of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will all say “We did this ourselves.”
Pg. 202 In one study involving 600 teachers and 10,000 students, the students (from kindergarten to grade twelve) of teachers who were trained to offer high levels of empathy, congruence, and positive regard were compared with control students of teachers who did not offer high levels of these facilitative conditions. The students of the high facilitative teachers were found to
1. Miss fewer days of school during the year;
2. Have increased scores on self-concept measures, indicating more positive self regard;
3. Make greater gains on academic achievement measures, including both math and reading scores;
4. Present fewer disciplinary problems;
5. Commit fewer acts of vandalism to school property;
6. Increase their scores on I.Q. tests (grades K-5)
7. Make gains in creativity scores from September to May; and
8. Be more spontaneous and use higher levels of thinking.
In addition, these benefits were cumulative; the more years in succession that students had a high functioning teacher, the greater the gains when compared with students of low functioning teachers.
Pg. 204 In the classrooms of teachers who were more empathic, more congruent, and more respectful of their students, there was:
1. More student talk
2. More student problem solving
3. More verbal initiation
4. More verbal response to a teacher
5. More asking of questions
6. More involvement in learning
7. More eye contact with teacher
8. More physical movement
9. Higher levels of cognition
10. Greater creativity
Corroboration from Germany
Pg. 217 When Reinhard and Anne-Marie Taush learned of the Aspy-Roebuck studies that have been presented in this chapter, they were challenged. Would the same results be found in German schools?
For a decade, they pursued these questions, replicating in their own way the Aspy-Roebuck studies. Working with their students, many doctoral dissertations and a host of masters’ theses were completed bearing on these questions. These have been published in a variety of German journals.
It is unfortunate that lack of space prevent us from presenting their full report. Instead we will let them summarize their findings and suggest some of the implications.
In all of the school studies, empathic understanding, genuineness, warm respect, and nondirective activities proved to significantly facilitate the quality of the pupils’ intellectual contributions during the lesson, their spontaneity, their independence and initiative, their positive feelings during the lesson, and their positive perception of the teacher. Teachers who were rated high on all four dimensions felt more content with themselves and their lessons. Furthermore, all the studies indicated that low ratings on understanding, genuineness, respect, and nondirective facilitation and high rating on directive leading accompanied lower levels of pupil intellectual performance and significantly negative emotional experiences.
If we want to diminish stress, aversion, and impairment of physical and emotional health in schools and at the same time facilitate the development of personality and the quality of intellectual performance, then we will need a different kind of teacher than we seem to produce at present. Teachers are needed who can create in their classes an atmosphere in which there is empathic understanding, pupils receive warmth and respect, genuineness is encouraged, and the teacher can be facilitative in nondirective ways.
Pg. 219
Let me bring this chapter to a close by posing a number of questions to teachers, to supervisors, to administrators, and to those involved in the training of teachers.
Within the educational domain for which you have responsibility, would you find it desirable if:
Pg. 220
1. Students learned reading, math and other subjects at a more accelerated rate?
2. Student absenteeism was reduced, thus increasing outside financial aid.
3. Pupils had more self-confidence, valued themselves more, were more able to know and express their won feelings?
4. Discipline problems and disruptive behavior in the classroom were diminished?
5. Vandalism by students decreased?
6. Many pupils made a gain in I.Q.?
7. Students developed the higher thinking processes – problem-solving and decision-making abilities?
8. Students gave more evidence of creativity?
9. Students were more spontaneous and initiated more activity, more conversation?
10. Students were more eager learners, asking more questions, making more contributions, enjoying learning?
11. Students were not mere memorizers?
12. Students became more self-directing, able to choose their own areas of study, and responsibly carry through their own plans?
13. Students liked their teachers?
14. Students developed more ability to work together cooperatively?
To the extent that your answer to these questions is “yes,” the studies reported in this chapter show how these results may come about. Every one of these outcomes is significantly more likely in classrooms where the teachers rate high on the facilitative conditions: where they are themselves as genuine persons in the class; where they respect the uniqueness of each student; where they let students know that their feelings and the meaning that the school experience has for them is understood.
One Pathway to Education
Pg. 300 A small boy enters school, his first day. He is eager to go, because it is a step towards being grown up. He knows that big boys go to school. On the other hand, he is frightened. It is a strange new situation, full of fearsome possibilities. he has heard stories about school – about punishments, about exciting times, about report cards, about teachers, friendly and unfriendly. It is a scary uncertainty.
Pg. 301
Then the ordeal begins . . . His body squirms, his mind wanders. Finally lunch. Not until they are all lined up in a perfectly straight row they permitted to walk, silently, to the lunch room. His educational career has commenced. He has already learned a great deal, though he could not put it into words.
He has learned that:
- there is no place for his restless physical energy in the school room;
- one conforms or takes the unpleasant consequences;
- submission to rules is very important;
- making a mistake is very bad;
- the punishment for a mistake is humiliation;
- spontaneous interest does not belong in school;
- teacher and disciplinarian are synonymous;
- school is, on the whole an unpleasant experience.
As the days, months, years roll by he learns other things. He learns that:
- most textbooks are boring;
- it is not safe to differ with a teacher;
- there are many ways to get by without studying;
- it is okay to cheat;
- daydreams and fantasy can make the day pass more quickly;
- to study hard and get good grades is behavior scorned by one’s peers;
- most of the learning relevant to his life takes place outside of school;
- original ideas have no place in school;
- exams and grades are the most important aspects of education
- most teachers are, in class, impersonal and boring.
So this is one pathway, one type of school experience. I believe it is a pathway experienced by millions of children and young people. Have I painted it in too gloomy terms? Here is a statement from a letter written by a professor of education in a university. She has taught for many years, been involved in the training of teachers, has kept in close touch with the schools in her large city. After describing some experiences in which students show how frightened they are by the possibility of learning in an academic setting, she bursts out with some strong feelings. “It seems to me schools not only murder feelings, they also destroy the power of thought and the capacity for learning anything outside of authority-stipulated, to-be-memorized isolated details – if that can be called learning! People are turned into appendages for assembly-line machinery. My heart is pounding as I write this. The poisonousness of the school has never been so glaringly apparent to me before. I have thought the notion of ‘deschooling society’ a hare-brained one, believing we must transform the school from within. But I wonder now – is it humanly possible? And here I feel like crying, out of sheer frustration and a sense of helplessness, and anger.”
A Second Way to Learning
Pg. 302-3 We have seen in the preceding chapters that there is another path, another way. Let me sketch that picture very briefly.
A small girl goes to school for the first time. The atmosphere is friendly and informal. Part of her fear and anxiety disappear as the teacher greets her warmly and introduces her to some of the other children.
When it is time for school to begin, they sit in a circle with the teacher. She asked the children to tell of one thing they are interested in, one thing they like to do. The teacher’s interest in each youngster is evident, and the little girl relaxes even more. This may be fun.
There are all kinds of interesting things in the room – books, maps, pictures, building blocks, crayons and paper, some toys – and soon the children are investigating their environment. Our small girl looks at a picture book of children in another country.
When the teacher calls them together again, she asks the girl if she could tell a little story. Our youngster starts to tell about going shopping with her mother. The teacher prints part of the story on the board and points out the words and letters. And so the day has begun.
What has this small girl learned? She has learned that:
- her curiosity is welcome and prized;
- the teacher is friendly and caring;
- she can learn new things, both on her own and with the teacher’s help;
- there is room for spontaneity here;
- she can contribute to the group learning;
- she is valued as a person.
We don’t need to follow her school career further because it has all been described in earlier chapters. But in this humanistically oriented school, we will find various elements as she continues through the years.
- She will have a part in choosing what she wishes and needs to learn.
- She will learn reading and mathematics more rapidly than her friends in other schools.
- She will find an outlet for her creativity.
- She will become more expressive of both feelings and thoughts.
- She will develop a confidence in, and a liking for herself.
- She will discover that learning is fun.
- She will look forward to going to school.
- She will like and respect her teachers and be liked and respected in turn.
- She will find a place in school for all of her many and expanding interests.
- She will develop a knowledge of resources, ways of finding out what she wants to know.
- She will read about, think about, and discuss the crucial social issues of her time.
- She will find some things very difficult to learn, requiring effort, concentration and self-discipline.
- She finds such learning very rewarding.
- She learns to attack tasks cooperatively, working with others to achieve a goal.
- She is on the way to becoming an educated person, one who is learning how to learn.
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