What we don’t know about our students — and why we don’t know it

09-06-2011

Guest blog by Alfie Kohn/Washington Post

There’s a scene near the beginning of Small Change (also known as Pocket Money), Truffaut’s übercharming movie about children of all ages, in which a teacher makes each of her students recite a passage from a Molière play — a test of both memory and dramatic skill. The teacher is especially tough on one boy who chants the lines in a leaden monotone: She stands next to his desk and threatens (in front of his peers) to keep making him repeat the lines until his performance is to her liking. Abruptly, though, she is called away, and the moment she’s gone, the boy comes to life. He stands up and begins to wander around the room while delivering the Molière monologue with remarkable power and spontaneity, revealing to his peers his considerable talents as an actor. The point, of course, is to remind us adults how little we really know our kids and what they’re capable of doing. That was a lesson I personally learned some years ago when I was teaching high school. (more...)

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What we don’t know about our students — and why we don’t know it

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