Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.
Interpretation
Children should be recognized as individuals with their own needs and rights, not merely as future adults.
This quote from Alfie Kohn emphasizes the importance of acknowledging children's autonomy and individuality. It argues that children possess their own unique experiences and rights that deserve to be respected and considered in both educational and social contexts, rather than being overlooked in favor of their potential future roles as adults.
In practice
In a discussion about child rights during a community meeting.
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.
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?
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.
Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.
I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else.
There are very few people at the decision-making table to argue for minimum-wage workers. Very few people.
Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today. They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect, as equals. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be - The unknown person inside each of them is the hope for the future.
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.
We owe our children an environment in which they can flourish, and where law enforcement, the justice system, and society as offers them a fresh start, not a jail cell.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.