This is my response to Glasser's book "The Quality School."

-- Anonymous, December 21, 1998

Answers

I found the Glasser book to be yet another example of wishful thinking for education's future teacher. I feel that the best service that can be provided teachers is to develop ways in which the logistics and structure of their jobs are made easier so that teaching skills may develop naturally with fewer external distractions along the way. A good teacher is naturally a good teacher and no amount of training will make a bad teacher better. The only way to sharpen classroom skills is to be in the classroom. What Glasser seems to be suggesting is that a collective utopian ideal be instilled into a school in which all teachers would learn a uniform way to deal with students and their learning in process. The greatness of our educational system, in part, stems from the diversity of the teachers that are in this nation's classrooms-good, bad and ugly are all essential components to a child's education. Varying perspectives matter, as well as varying approaches to problems and situations. I don't think his method of dealing with students could work for all teachers and I don't think we would want it to. Let's look for ways to create a better system to provide structures for our teachers that allow their creativity in the classroom to come first. A bad teacher is a bad teacher and there should be ways to discourage these individuals from teaching while rewarding those who excel. We will never get rid of all the bad teachers, but do we want to? Perhaps a bad teacher serves the great teacher by demonstrating perspective and position. The world is full of bad people, can our kids tell the difference? I am in favor of creating administrations that take care of all business that is seperate from learning so that learning may happen as a matter of course. The idea of a teacher taking on the role of parent, social worker and what not makes me nervous. I don't think many people can really hope to accomplish all that is expected of the modern teacher. Teachers should teach, inspire and lead by example-the system should take care of the rest. Of course there will always be teachers who go above and beyond the call of duty-great but should we expect that of all teachers? It won't happen, most people have lives outside of education. Glasser has some good ideas but there is no way I could see his "quality school" concept really working in the real world.

-- Anonymous, March 15, 1999