William Glasser

“Every single major push in education has made it worse and right now it's really bad because everything we've done is de-humanizing education. It's destroying the possibility of the teacher and the student having a warm, friendly, intellectual relationship.”

“This is at the heart of all good education, where the teacher asks students to think and engages them in encouraging dialogues, constantly checking for understanding and growth.”

“I think it is totally wrong and terribly harmful if education is defined as acquiring knowledge.”

“Education is the process in which we discover that learning adds quality to our lives. Learning must be experienced.”

“To counter the avoidance of intellectual challenge and responsibility, we must reduce the domination of certainty in education.”

“If you improve education by teaching for competence, eliminating schooling, and connecting with students, the test scores will improve.”

“If we had in this room a hundred teachers, good teachers from good schools, and asked them to define the word education, there would be very little general agreement.”

“I think education is both using and improving knowledge and that changes the whole picture.”

“We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.”

“Caring for but never trying to own may be a further way to define friendship.”

“What happened in the past that was painful has a great deal to do with what we are today, but revisiting this painful past can contribute little or nothing to what we need to do now.”

“Using no control and using humor will build a relationship and make a dent to where the client puts the counselor in their quality world and then begins to relate and seek out the counselor. Effective therapy begins with the acceptance of the therapist into the client's quality world.”

“You can acquire a lot of knowledge without ever going to school.”

“We don't focus as much in schools on educational knowledge which requires thinking and application, as we do on acquiring facts.”

“As long as acquiring knowledge is the educational goal of schools, educational opportunities will be limited, as they are now, to affluent families.”

“Since there will be no one left to talk peace after the next war, it makes good sense to break with tradition and hold the peace conference first.”

“What students lack in school is an intellectual relationship or conversation with the teacher.”

“We can teach a lot of things, but if the teacher can't relate by talking to a group of friendly students, he'll never be a competent teacher.”

“In a Glasser Quality School there is no such thing as a closed book test. Students are told to get out their notes and open their books. There is no such thing as being forbidden to ask the teacher or another student for help.”

“Prior to being allowed to enter the profession, prospective teachers should be asked to talk with a group of friendly students for at least half an hour and be able to engage them in an interesting conversation about any subject the prospective teacher wants to talk about.”