William Glasser

“When you study great teachers... you will learn much more from their caring and hard work than from their style.”

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

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

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

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

“They have this big book called the 'DSM-IV,' you know, that is supposedly written about crazy people, but I think it is a book that is written by crazy people!”

“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.”

“No human being will work hard at anything unless they believe that they are working for competence.”

“Told that the passing grade is a B or competence and that we will help you to get there, students do competent work. The lowest passing grade in the real world is competence. Why do schools...”

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

“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.”

“To be depressed or neurotic is passive. It happened to us; we are its victim, and we have no control over it.”

“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....”

“When we depress, we believe we are the victims of a feeling over which we have no control.”

“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...”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is almost impossible for anyone, even the most ineffective among us, to continue to choose misery after becoming aware that it is a choice.”

“There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.”

“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 inte...”