Customer Reviews

Freedom to learn;: A view of what education might become (Studies of the person)

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Humanistic education alive and well!! Did John Dewey start this lineage, or does it go back farther still? This book is both an introduction and an advanced course in the heart and soul of relating to students as individuals, not classes. Following Carl Roger's death, H. Jerome Freiberg co-wrote this Third Edition at the invitation of Roger's daughter. Freiberg keeps the best of the old and supplements it with up-to-date research. His touch is so deft and his philosophy so congruent with Roger's that I had trouble telling one author's voice from the other's as they alternated first-person chapters. One chapter is a summary of Aspy and Roebuck's Kid's Don't Learn from People They Don't Like, a hard-to-find out-of-print book that provides some surprising (to me) statistical support for humanistic education. Freiberg also cites Arthur Combs, author of A Personal Approach to Teaching: Beliefs That Make a Difference, another out-of-print book that with Zen-like simplicity cuts through all the debate about teaching technique to reveal that it's how teacher's FEEL about students, not so much what they do, that creates healthy learning places for people to grow. I highly recommend FREEDOM TO LEARN, and it also contains a wealth of resources for teachers wishing to follow this "path with a heart."

I was very impressed with the honest questions, the hard to ask questions that Rogers asks about education. In the beginning chapter, he admits that there are disturbing questions worthy of great debate, questions whose answers will form the foundation for students and learners. What will education do to take the edge off of racial tension? How will education help prevent civil and world wars? Back in 1969, Carl Rogers saw some disturbing trends. He talked about the possible student revolts against this conservative and rigid institution which could be very harmful to the entire process. Some of his worst nightmares are taking effect today. School violence in our inner cities is sky rocketing with no end in sight. Child are losing respect for their teachers at a very young age. There seems to be a lot less respect for educators than there was 25 years ago when I was in school. Rogers was also concerned with profit-making corporations getting too much of a hand in education. This is a big concern these days with the society taking on more and more of a corporate feel. If Dr. Rogers saw education at a crisis point in 1969, then where are we now??

In the book, CR also differentiates experiental (self-directed)learning from meaningless rote type learning, where there is no personal context for connection. To have freedom to learn, a person's self-confidence and curiousity grows along with intense curiousity to learn more, to have initial learning build on itself to create something brand new.

This book made me think of the unnecessary regimentation which still plagues much of public education. Students should be encouraged (like in the movie "Dead Poets Society") to do their own dance, to fill their own sails with self-directed discovery.

Rogers' concept of congruence has a lot to do with what he is talking about here. The ability to be real in a relationship is much like the teacher being real in accepting the true needs of the student. It is only with empathic listening, not regimentation, with honestly instead of false airs of playing the education game, with a person-centered approach to education and career related goals, not wishes imposed from the outside.....that, I believe, is what he is getting at. A teacher, he says, "must be a person to his students", not a faceless embodiment of a cirricular requirement nor a sterile tube through which knowledge is passed from one generation to the next."

He sums up his feelings about developing optimal climates for student learning, in a person-centered way:
"If we are to have citizens who can live constructively in this kaleidoscopically changing world, we can only have them if we are willing for them to become self-starting, self-initiating learners. Finally, it has been my purpose to show that this kind of learner develops best, so far as we now know, in a growth- promoting, facilitative, relationship with a person."

I'm writing to you to tell you that the book is not out of print! At least my local bookseller quoted me £23 for it only yesterday!

I rate the book very highly, and the reason I want a copy is so that I can present it to my daughter on her graduation as a teacher. If you confirm to me that it is out of print I shall go back to my bookseller (who may, of course, be wrong!).

Best regards,Paul

I am totally disgusted by this book for at least two reasons.

By page 32, the authors have referred to pregnancy as a disease, a "pathology," and "a medical emergency" several times. It is cited as evidence of poor performance of the public schools. First of all, pregnancy is not a disease. It is the way by which we reproduce ourselves. Many consider it to be desired for the continuation of our species. Secondly, of course female sexuality would be blamed for the failures of the state. Whenever the men in power fail us, they have to drag some teenage girl out into the street and shave her head, right? "If my magic did not protect you in battle, it was because my wife was menstruating."

They keep insisting that public schools are necessary for the function of democracy. Because they seem not to want to admit that democracy is not the modus operandi of the United States (remember slavery, the draft, the election of 2000?), the public schools just being another cog in the machine that oppresses working people, they postulate that if only the public schools were reformed, democracy would somehow thrive here. Their interpretation of the evidence that the public schools are prisons at best, sometimes torture chambers, is interpreted to mean that public schools are the balm that will heal the ills of the other "pillars of support" : families, culture, religion, community.

On page 31, the authors give us in support of their theory a story about a public school teacher beating a child with a wooden board. The doors to the classrooms in this school are padlocked, so without a key, they can be opened neither from within or without. Clearly, the children are regarded as slaves, locked in cages, with no concern for their human rights, or even if they survive in the event of a fire. Yet the authors continue to extoll the virtues of our public schools. They are the bedrock of democracy.