4 Quotes by Kirsten Olson

The middle class and upper middle class are highly attached to the institution of school explicitly as a sorting mechanism, as a way of justifying privileges of which middle-class members are already central beneficiaries. These critics suggest that the entire notion of schools as meritocracies actually reifies and reinforces class privilege--making those whom school rewards (those who already have a lot of benefits) feel they deserve the privileges they have.

In fact, I think that our society expects schools to get students to the point where they do things only for outside rewards. People who perform tasks for their internal reasons are hard to control. Now, I don't think teachers get up in the morning and say to themselves, 'I', going to go to school today and take away all those young people's internal motivations' ...but that's exactly what often happens.

Like jilted and disappointed lovers, some of my students just want to be left alone.

But if you believe that adults can ‘make’ children learn well – in the absence of or in defiance of a child’s inner sense of confident engagement with the power of discovery and mastery – then, in my view, you are placing that child at great risk of failure as a learner.