The overwhelming number of teachers ...are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.
Interpretation
Teachers often lack a clear understanding of the learning theories that guide their practices.
Alfie Kohn's quote highlights a significant issue in the field of education, where many teachers operate without a foundational understanding of the educational theories that inform their methods. This lack of awareness can lead to ineffective teaching practices and a disconnect between educational goals and the strategies employed in the classroom, ultimately hindering student learning and growth.
In practice
In a professional development workshop for teachers, one might say: 'As Alfie Kohn noted, many educators may not fully understand the learning theories that inform their teaching methods.'
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.
Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.
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?
I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.
It's important for Asian American kids to see themselves in stories and to feel seen. They need to know that their stories are universal, too, that they, too, can fall in love in a teen movie. They don't have to be the sidekick; they can be the hero.
Perhaps we have been misguided into taking too much responsibility from our children, leaving them too little room for discovery
Observation, very general and wide-spread, has shown that small children are endowed with a special psychic nature. This shows us a new way of imparting education!
I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.
Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.
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