Steve Nelson, head of a progressive private school in Néw York City, writes vividly and cogently about the inevitable failure of so-called reform.
The corporate reforms fail because they are built on extrinsic motivation, that is, a regime of carrots and sticks to drive teachers and students to comply with reformers’ demands.
Extrinsic methods tend to depress motivation. People resent being compelled, and they lose the desire to do what they would have willingly done without the whip hand over them.
Intrinsic motivation, by contrast, brings out the best in people.
Nelson writes:
“Intrinsic motivation is driven by factors that emanate from within: Self-satisfaction, desire for mastery, curiosity, fulfillment, pleasure, self-realization, desire for independence, ethical needs, etc. Intrinsic motivation is a powerful innate characteristic of all humans, across cultures and societies. Anyone with children or working with children observes the natural intrinsic motivation of young children – a nearly insatiable curiosity, drive to explore, and desire for mastery.
“A considerable body of research confirms that intrinsic motivation is more powerful, long lasting and important. But intrinsic motivation steadily declines from 3rd grade until 8th or 9th grade as extrinsic structures dramatically increase. The stakes get higher. Tests increase in frequency and duration. Expectations around college and achievement ratchet up. Grade point averages, honor roles, valedictorians, salutatorians, class ranks, honor societies . . . all of these forms of extrinsic motivation are ubiquitous.”
As Jerome Bruner points out, “learning becomes steadily de-contextualized as children move from grade to grade. As school becomes more controlled, more about instruction than exploration, more about abstraction than experience, children’s natural intrinsic motivation declines. The learning is unrelated to their lives. Why would they care?”
Nelson concludes:
“Students and teachers are being subjected to increasingly punitive extrinsic structures: Scores, grades, evaluations, assessments, punishments, discipline, rigidity, standardization, absence of context, divorced from individual experience.
All the factors that stimulate and perpetuate intrinsic motivation are disappearing.
“To say education reform has it wrong is a monumental understatement. Policy makers and educational reformers seem hell bent on beating students and their teachers until their morale improves.
“That’s just stupid.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The learning is unrelated to their lives. Why would they care?””
Isn’t that part of a teacher’s job, to relate the subject matter to the student’s lives??
As a learner, I care about learning all kinds of things that are supposedly “unrelated to my life”. I make them related to my being. New experiences, thoughts, ideas are available to all (especially with the information now available online) and it is a teacher’s responsibility to help the students learn how to cherish learning for learning sake. Many adminimals want teachers to believe that the only thing that counts is what’s on the test and what is supposed to be covered in the curriculum and the rest of the learning process is denied, short shrifted, and otherwise to be denigrated. Short sighted thinking that short shiftedness.
Teachers already understand their job, they just aren’t allowed to do it.
Thank you MathVale!
“. . . they just aren’t allowed to do it.”
It’s not that they “aren’t allowed”, it that they choose to follow, sheep-like in full GAGA and institute what they know to be educational malpractices. The problem lies not only with the adminimals who refuse to stand up against those malpractices but also those teachers who don’t stand up against them also.
Such is the state of fear and retaliation in public education today that the majority of those working in it, who will tell you in private that the malpractices are a crock, prefer to be “good Germans” and keep the public education malpractice machine humming. As Arendt pointed out, it’s the “banality of evil”, the everyday small, very human individual decisions to supposedly protect themselves and family from some unseen harm if they refuse to participate in this educational malpractice that harms so many students-banality of evil.
I think you are blaming teachers when many are struggling with an unfair system. With plenty of Marines in my family, I believe the saying “is this the hill I want to die on?” is a good one for practicing educators. Yes, there is GAGA but that is indicative of our entire workforce since the Great Recession. Few Americans feel they can change jobs or ask for a raise. Few teachers can afford to sacrifice themselves for the cause.
There are many effective ways to win. Staying strong as teachers every day, winning over parents, keeping the issues alive in the community and blogs. When the time is right, visible opposition will be effective. And do not confuse GAGA with ignorance. Too many teachers have no idea what is going on and vote Republican against their own interest.
Your condemnation of teachers from behind a safe keyboard is misplaced and seems odd. Are you really Raj hijacking Duane’s account?
No, MathVale, no Raj here-ha ha!
My castigation of the GAGAers is meant to wake people up to what is happening. To be a thorn in their side. Yes, it’s crude and perhaps even rude, but it’s not a case of do as I say and not as I do as I’ve been targeted for challenging what I consider malpractices and falsehoods. I was hounded out of one district, and if I hadn’t retired this year, I would have been hounded again because I would have refused to institute malpractices that have no basis in sound pedagogy.
And yes, I can be strident in my condemnations of those GAGAers.
GAGA = Good Acquiescing German Attitude (from the 30’s) allows the “banality of evil” to coalesce into customary mainstream iniquities that harm the most innocent of society, the children.
Sorry but I refuse to go along to get along with those noxious malpractices that are occurring daily!
Teachers really need to learn to be subversive and hide behind a closed door. We need to learn to “code switch” when an administrator walks in the door. In other words, teachers need to be the underground and hide in plain sight. We need to play the game when the powers that be are watching and teach the way that allows genuine learning when they turn their backs.
This reminds me of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” who every time the headmistress came into her classroom had taught her students the drill so that the room was quickly converted to the proper lesson required by the administration. Thought this pretty clever, though she did have some other unsavory issues that we might want to steer clear of.
Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.
Or the movie version of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda.” The young teacher, Miss Honey, brightens up the classroom trying to foster a love of learning, which is against school policy. The students must leap to hide the evidence when they hear the approach of the horrible principal, Miss Trunchbull. Trunchbull says, “Even if you didn’t do it, I’m going to punish you, because I’m big and you’re small, I’m right and you’re wrong, and there’s nothing you can do about it!” Sound familiar?
Robert Burton, a contemporary of Shakespeare said of teachers:
For what course shall he take (the learned man), being now capable and ready? The most parable and easy, and about which many are employed, is to teach a school, turn lecturer or curate, and for that he shall have falconer’s wages, ten pounds per annum, and his diet, or some small stipend, so long as he can please his patron or the parish; if they approve him not (for usually they do but a year or two), as inconstant as they that cried “Hosanna” one day and “Crucify him” the other; serving-man like, he must go look a new master; if they do what is his reward?
At last thy snow-white age in suburb schools
Shall toil in teaching boys their grammar rules.
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
Things don’t seem to change much. Or there is this, Thomas Love Peacock’s parody of Shelley’s education:
When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him; and he was sent home like a well- threshed ear of corn, with nothing in his head. Thomas Peacock; Nightmare Abbey
Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.
Excellent article!! I’m doing my dissertation on the relationship between self-regulated learning (which stems from an intrinsic, mastery goal orientation) and standardized testing (extrinsic, performance goal orientation) on students in the state of Texas. Self-regulated learning has a big body of research that suggest significant relationships to increased student achievement. There are about 16 studies that suggest standardized testing has no effect on motivation or achievement, especially for at-risk children.
Only one study that I have found, in 2011 in Germany, has questioned the effect of standardized testing on self-regulated learning. Findings showed no relationship between the two. So we have a high-stakes movement complete with serious consequences gripping our nation’s school system that does nothing toward increasing motivation, effort regulation, or achievement.
This is what happens when non-educators control the schools.
Interestingly enough, in 18 years teaching public high school, I never once heard of self-regulation in all those hours of professional development. It is a research body that is student focused rather than teacher/instructional focused, and for the past two decades all reform has been about what the teacher is doing, to the detriment of the student, who is getting the message that learning is about the teacher’s instruction and has zilch to do with their own personal effort. Through this we are forming generations with victim mentalities.
I’m convinced some of that is marketing.
The fact is ed reform is an easier political sell if the entire responsibility for “public education” is dumped on teachers. Most people aren’t teachers. If we shift the focus to teachers and off parents, students, politicians and the general public it’s easier to sell.
I think it’s a profound mistake. All they’re doing is letting all of the rest of us off the hook. If they succeed in that goal they will regret it long term because the fact is it ISN’T just up to teachers.
It may have been effective as a political tactic or a marketing tool but it is not a long term plan for “public education”. When you tell the public over and they over that they can simply “demand” teachers provide whatever it is we’re looking for, they will do that.
unheardofwriter, read Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore on intrinsic motivation. Also Dan Ariely and Edward Deci and Daniel Pink.
I would add to the list a piece by Bill Gates.
😱
A speech to his alma mater. September 23, 2005.
Link: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/media-center/speeches/2005/09/bill-gates-lakeside-school
Did Lakeside School “beat” him into being “successful” aka extrinsic motivation or did it “lead” him into being “successful” by stoking the fires of his intrinsic motivation?
You read and be the judge.
😎
Thanks Diane, will do!
Yep. Intrinsic Motivation!
That’s the deep joy and sense of accomplishment, purpose, fulfillment.
Self-sustaining drive.
You use extrinsic motivation to get minor things done a bit better or to sweeten the pot. But it can cut into intrinsic motivation.
Sticks kill motivation and morale and much more re: self-esteem, stress, confidence, etc.
It has always been my belief that the principle goal of a teacher is to provoke curiosity. I often ask students if they want to “rent” or “own.” Students who rent their learning are those that learn what they have to learn to pass a test and then forget it. If they are tested on the same materials again, they will have to “re-rent” what they once knew. Those that “own” their learning are those that have learned for the love of learning or because what they learn has value to them for whatever reason, they learn it and want to keep it.
I also think there is a difference between being “learned” and being “scholastic” (not sure what the right word for this is). Another thing I suggest to students is that real scholarship is thought conducted over time and that both elements are important. Standardized tests encourage students to be merely “learned” in the sense that they have facts at their fingertips (what I think of as Jeopardy knowledge) they can answer questions, but do not really know what to do with what they know. To be a true “scholar” you need to have developed the ability to reflect on what you know, to apply it to situations in life and to the ways in which you live your life. Students believe (as do many adults) that they will never use Calculus after they leave school and there is some truth to that I suppose, but what they do not realize is though they may not use Calculus per-see, there will be times in their lives that in order to solve a problem or gain insight into something they will have to employ the kind of thinking skills that Calculus develops.
I teach A. P. Language and Composition and I suggest to students that in constructing an argument there is value in employing the kind of thinking they acquire in Geometry and Algebra classes where each step they make must be supported with evidence, there must be a mathematical theorem or axiom that allows them to make the assertions they are making. Students write essays about one thing or another without understanding why they are writing about these things. Often on standardized tests these essays are not graded on the cogency of the argument but the students skill at marshaling evidence without much thought to the argument as a whole, it is the appearance of an argument not the argument itself that is graded. It is often the same with the testing of Mathematics and Science; there is a focus on problem solving without much understanding of why the problems need to be solved or the underlying principles at stake.
If we provoke curiosity, students will learn because they want to understand the principles and problems involved and in order to explore those principles and problems they need to know the skills they are being taught. Students who are curious want to know and often do not learn skills so much as learn how to teach themselves so that they can gain deeper insights into what has provoked their curiosity.
Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.
I would even argue against the term “learned,” as the information being memorized and regurgitated is from such a narrow slice of subject matter: ELA and Math.
I think this is an important point. No matter how ephemeral our learning may be it ought to be worth learning in the first place, even if one fully intends to forget within a day or two. It also seems, even in ELA and Math that the emphasis is not on content but on skills and what is the point of being able to write a proper sentence if you have nothing to say or do not have the vocabulary to say effectively what it is you have to say.
Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.
Rent or own…great analogy!!! I’m using that one with my freshmen.
Use it on all levels of your students!
As usual j.D., excellent commentary.
I always run into this with this criticism, but there are a lot of parents here who 100% believe in carrots and sticks. Mostly sticks, actually. I’m not clear where they get it because I’m older than a lot of them and I went to public schools and I have no memory of these mythical good old days where students were all high-performing and we were all 100% marching with the program, but I hear it over and over.
I don’t know the numbers state-wide and of course schools vary widely, but this is a working/middle class district with a wide range of family incomes. I’d say about 25% of parents believe if we just had bigger sticks everyone would fall into line.
Fear and insecurity.
My own dad recalls stories from Catholic school that sound like a prisoner camp. I do not know if he really like school, but it almost was like a right of passage. But all he knew was switches, rulers on knuckles, and beatings with aerodynamic paddles.
I think many of those 25% fear the world and losing control of their children. Their fears are not unfounded, but it is easier for them to control through force than guide through finesse. And some are just plain mean.
It makes me sad because I know a lot of these people. The children who will suffer the most under the “all stick” approach are THEIR children. The “whole child” parents here tend to be higher income. We’re the ones who can afford to replace art and music and less restrictive approaches to learning something with our own money as that disappears from public schools.
My kids weren’t harmed when we went to test prep over trips to the museum that is 60 miles away. My kids will go anyway. When they cut funding for the band program in half I bought music lessons because I know one person cannot teach 120 kids how to read and play music without the assistant teacher he relied upon had for the 20 years prior. Something has to give and what goes is the “extra” stuff.
It’s a lie that it’s “plus/and” instead of “either/or” in the real world as Duncan and Crew keep insisting. That’s a lie. That isn’t how priorities work.
I know many had bad experiences with Catholic school. But I have to say that if it were not for the Catholic High School I attended (Fermin Lasuen in San Pedro, Calif. which sadly is no more) I do not know where I would be. I started public school with Kindergarten in the L. A. school system in 1954. I am dyslexic and I struggled greatly. My parents put me in a private school that made me repeat the first grade because I hadn’t learned what I needed to, but I was put back in public school for the second grade going forward. By the sixth grade (no longer L. A. Unified, we moved into another district, but they had much the same outlook as L. A.) I was in a vocational track and starting in Junior Highs School the district wanted to put me into a special school for students with intellectual deficiencies (they had another name for it at the time that we know longer find socially acceptable). My parents would not permit me to be put into that school, but the Junior High (would be Middle School today) tracked me into courses that were in no way challenging or interesting, mostly shop type classes (nothing wrong with shop except as a steady diet). My parents put me into a Lutheran Junior High School and a Catholic High School. Neither school understood any more about dyslexia than the public schools, they just made me compete with everyone else. It was not until the second semester of my junior year of high school that I was able to become more than a “C” or “D” student, but I went on to be an honor roll student for the last year and a half of my high school career. If the Catholic High School (and the Lutheran School) had not challenged me to complete, forced me to compete, I would never have survived college or even gotten in to begin with. The Catholic School had patience with me, provoked my natural curiosity, and did not restrict what I was permitted to think (I was free to challenge what was taught if I disagreed, even in religion classes). I am now a Nationally Certified Teacher (not sure if that really means much) with a Masters Degree in English Literature. None of this would be possible if not for the Catholic school I attended. I only mention this because I think Catholic schools need to be given their due and though I know there are bad ones, there are many good ones as well.
Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.
I admire and congratulate you on overcoming hurdles. But my own son with ADD and some autism was locked in a Catholic school closet and they had no intention of helping him. A very different story and outcome. Just the opposite for us. We eventually enrolled him in a public school with well trained veterans and he is in college. It could be Catholic schools are changing or your other abilities helped overcome the challenges. I think that is impressive.
I agree, it’s fear. The sense of insecurity, in my observation, pertains most often to the prevailing sense of shifting economic sands during these ‘controlling’ parents’ childhoods. A boomer, I grew up rural: the barely-middle- and working-class parents I knew mostly fit the description. They had Depression-era childhoods. It makes sense that we are teaching the children of another wave of fearful parents: during their childhoods the US was hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs and family farms.
I do not see a causal connection to Catholic schools, nor to Evangelical upbringing. Both lean toward black-&-white thinking & authoritarianism. They are reflections of the fearful culture promoted by poverty, scrabbling for a foot-hold, feeling threatened from without. People will depend on them more heavily when it seems there’s only a wish and a prayer [or an illness, or a job loss!] between making it and falling into the abyss
My only point is that you can’t judge all on the basis of personal experience. But I will say that my experience in Catholic school has shaped me as a teacher. I believe that students generally do not believe in themselves until someone else believes in them first, usually an adult. This was my experience, my parents believed in me and my Catholic school teachers believed in me and as a result I gained some self-confidence and began to believe in myself. I, as most people, still struggle with self-confidence (I tell my students that I struggle because I think they need to know they are not alone in this struggle), but I would never have attempted the things I have attempted if these adults had not believed in me first. I think this is important. It is easy to find what is wrong with schools, public and private, and I think it is important to let each stand or fall on their own merits. The priests that taught me (and the laity) were not authoritarian, they were not close minded and they taught me not to be an authoritarian or close minded teacher. I know my experience is not everyone’s experience, but it is my experience.
Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.
You are correct, one person’s experience can not be applied to everyone’s experiences. What works in one situation, may not work in another. That’s one reason why teachers NEED to be flexible and supported—-not judged by VAM and forced to teach to scripts developed for a flawed and fraudulent CCSS.
Yes. I do admire your accomplishments. But as a Catholic myself who had to repel a predator priest in my own teenage years and struggle with the guilt of actually believing then seeing how my own child was mistreated by the school, enough is enough. Catholic schools always like to hold themselves superior to public schools and now want public money. Yet the patterns of behavior are too ingrained in their system to change. If they want public money, they should get public scrutiny.
I agree that private schools, Catholic or otherwise, should not receive public money. I live in Massachusetts and have seen the abuses of Catholic institutions and the harm some have done to children, I know people who have been harmed and agree that such behavior needs to be prevented and that oversight is important. Though I am not Catholic (nor were my parents or they would not likely have sent me to a Lutheran Junior High School), I just felt compelled to defend those that helped me and to suggest that not all are corrupt (I also know that if my experience mirrored yours I would probably feel the same as you). I was harmed by public schools, as was my brother, but I still have great hopes for public schools and believe in them. Not all are or were as misguided as the schools I attended. I believe sound and academically functioning public schools are the best hope for most of America’s children (and considering the state of the nation’s economy that will become more and more true as time goes by or until things change).
Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.
When people like their work and are considered a valued member of a team, they will work long hours and produce quality results. Decent pay and benefits with career paths also help.
After the phrase “I hate math”, is the utterance “when am I ever going to use this?”. The teaching response shouldn’t be force feeding algebra III to students struggling with fractions. Math teaches a way of thinking. If students can learn this through different levels of math, that should be the approach. Instead, we have reformy manifestos of useless and poorly written standards followed by irrelevant tests. Get politicians and billionaires out of the classroom and let teachers teach.
Thank you, MatVale. In junior high and high school (in the 60’s), I did not have math teachers who seemed to understand that much of math is about patterns. Patterns teach different levels of thinking, which lead to using imagination and creativity to solve problems. Educators understand this. Politicians, bureaucrats and reformers don’t get it.
MathVale, not MatVale
No problem. I’ve been called worse. Thanks for the comment!
In visual arts education you infer that intrinsic motivation is going on in a class when you say: “It is time to get ready for your next class,” and most of the kids say, “Do we have to?” That is fairly common in studio-based learning–so-called hands on, I prefer minds on. The classses are perceived to be over too soon, and they usually are too short.
The double-down amazement and joy for any teacher of art comes if you are engaging a whole class in a discussion of what they see in one or more works of art, or reproductions. I was fortunate to have that epiphany in a second grade classroom during my student teaching. The classroom teacher was no less astonished–40 minutes of sustained and vibrant questioning and conversation.
Of course that sort of thing is not measured by any standardized test. Charlotte Danielson’s observation protocol does not cover it. The No-Nosense Nurture program would kill it. It can’t be written up as an SLO or a SMART goal. But, the haunting remainder from one or more classes like this could become the reason why that second grader, at much later time, still remembers studying art in grade 2, or as an adult chooses to visit museums, galleries, or creates art or lives with some “useless” joy and concentrated attention to wonder-ful things, and loves lively conversations.
If art and music complements math to reach a student, I’m all for having that in my classroom!
No kidding…….
MathVale~
Getting politicians & billionaires out of the classroom is the 21st Century task because, according to them, teachers and parents are blocking access to our children. No longer do they have to lure children at the checkout counter or during Saturday morning cartoons – now, our children, every data point imaginable, belong to these vultures. They are convinced that our children’s data and the $B attached to them…BELONGS TO THEM!
The Opt-Out movement placed such an obstacle in their way, but their GREED and access to every latest technology will make it difficult for humanity to keep them away.
We still struggle with their smarmy rhetoric about how much they care about education and children. We slip into having scholarly debates with these vultures, hoping they will see children and understand education the way we do.
I do not think that will happen!
It is ALL ABOUT $$$$.
He who has the most DATA…WINS!
Our children are the bumper crop, endless bumper crop! Teachers and parents must change the way we deal with these greedy sociopaths.
Where are those think tanks?
And the Reformers have access to our children 24/7 into our homes and personal lives with technology like Facebook and Snapchat. They can completely bypass and undermine parents. After an instance with some sociopathic, “Christian” girls with our own daughter, we began to monitor (more) closely social media. These other girls were sick in the mind. Parents are completely ignorant ro some of the monsters they are raising. Misuse of technology amplifies and supports this degradation of society, which Reformers applaud. As long as the end game is to destroy teachers and privatize schools, why should they care the means to achieve it?
This short 10 minute you tube by Daniel Pink clearly shows that mastery, autonmy and purpose are what truly motivate people to do and produce their best. Althought he speaks in a business context, this could be easily applied to a teaching/learning mindset.: daniel pink youtube motivation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avnHUxSVfVM
Wondering where our dear friend Virginiasgp is with all the studies proving how much better standardized testing, VAM and other carrot-and-stick methods are than intrinsic motivation. How odd.
I worked longer in private business than I have worked as a teacher. When working as a geologist it was all about carrots and sticks. Extrinsic rewards and motivations were how the owners of every single firm I worked for managed their workforce. Some places were better than others, some were great places to work. In those places over time intrinsic rewards began to appear and become increasingly more important to me.
Now as an educator I find the situation quite different. To me, the intrinsic rewards of teaching and intrinsic motivations are so much more important than the extrinsic, and I’d venture more important to my colleagues as well. Most of my colleagues know no other way of working. I’m not saying pay/benefits aren’t important, but for me they pale in comparison. Merit pay won’t make me work harder or improve my practice. The threat of losing my job won’t either – though it could make me change my practice to a more narrow, limited focus based on the test.
But most workers are not teachers. So they are more familiar with the standard business model of extrinsic motivation and rewards, and thus they think teachers will respond similarly to carrots and sticks. The ed deformers are in this group, and many of their policies are predicted on teachers acting as predicted.
They seem surprised when we don’t. Imagine if the carrots they offered us included smaller class sizes, collaboration between administration and staff, adequate funding for classroom supplies…what would happen then?
Excellent points. Thank you!
Agree, rockhound. These folks, as voters, won’t get it. Nor are they likely to believe that things are coming to such a ‘pretty pass’ so swiftly since they were in public school– & therefore present a threat to theor own public schools (because the truth is stranger than fiction). By the same token these private-sector workers want to visit the same loss of purchasing power, benefits, & security they’ve experienced on teachers & other public workers paid w/their taxes– based on a rosy picture of public worker status that changed for the worse while they weren’t looking.
That’s why I think the best political foot to put forward is to continually publicize the $-&-cts facts. How much taxes are spent on the ed-reform boondoggles, what are the corresponding test results [‘student achievement’ as measured by ed-reformers]; have per-pupil costs or property taxes gown down? And of course, Opt Out! (The only way to get pols’ attention).
The RheeForm movement reminds of the Japanese commander of the prisoner of war camp in the film “The Bridge Over the River Kwai”, who tells the British prisoners of war that he is literally working to death that they must be “happy in their work.”
We are NOT Pavlov’s dog. I detest competition. I think it brings out the worse in people. Ever go to a high profile sports event? OY! Just look around.
There is a place for competition but it should be voluntary and not mandatory.
And shake hands afterwards. When did we start believing we have to destroy the opponent?
I usually don’t post links, but this is a great essay by Carl Safina on Wolf 21. Wolf 21 won every fight, but never destroyed his opponents, unlike all the other wolves. When Wolf 21 died of old age, one of his rivals in battle took over and practiced the same restraint. The end result was a stronger pack overall and better society.
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/04/the_perfect_wolf_twenty_one_was_a_legend_he_never_lost_a_fight_and_he_never_killed_a_vanquished_rival/
I read that Alexander the Great, after he defeated an enemy, allowed the people to live their lives without changes to their culture and practice any religion they wanted to follow. His only rule was not to rebel.
excellent point and very true
I have always thought that the issues of school reform and social emotional teaching go together.
http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/busting-3-myths-about-social-emotional-learning
Daniel Pink is on the motivation thing. Great lecture.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.