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?

If a child is off-task...mayb e the problem is not the child...maybe it's the task.

Standardized testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole.

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.

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.

Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test.

In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they are graduated, at which point we assume they have a house. What they have is a pile of bricks, and they don't have it for long.