"Education is the process in which we discover that learning adds quality to our lives. Learning must be experienced"
About this Quote
Education becomes discovery when learning moves from being delivered to being lived. William Glasser, an American psychiatrist best known for Choice Theory and Reality Therapy, argued that students learn best when they feel ownership, relevance, and connection. He linked effective learning to basic human needs for belonging, power, freedom, and fun. When those needs are engaged, the result is not just knowledge acquisition but a felt improvement in the quality of life.
The distinction is between schooling and education. Schooling can be passive: sitting through lectures, memorizing facts, collecting grades. Education is active: solving problems that matter, applying ideas, reflecting on outcomes. Experience gives learning context, emotion, and purpose. The first time a student designs a budget, conducts a lab that answers a real question, or speaks a new language to be understood, the learning becomes part of who they are. It sticks because it is useful and self-chosen, not just required.
Glasser’s Quality Schools movement pressed for classrooms where students do quality work by self-evaluating, revising, and producing artifacts that meet clear standards. That emphasis elevates learning from a transactional task to a craft. The reward shifts from external approval to intrinsic satisfaction: the pride of competence, the joy of curiosity satisfied, the freedom of being able to do something new.
For teachers, the message is to design experiences, not just deliver content. Projects with authentic audiences, internships, service learning, simulations, and labs create the conditions for deep understanding. Feedback becomes a conversation, not a judgment. For learners, the invitation is to chase usefulness and meaning, to test ideas in the world, to risk failure as part of growth.
Education, then, is a way of living that makes life richer. When learning is experienced, it transforms time spent in classrooms into capabilities, relationships, and choices that continue long after the test ends.
The distinction is between schooling and education. Schooling can be passive: sitting through lectures, memorizing facts, collecting grades. Education is active: solving problems that matter, applying ideas, reflecting on outcomes. Experience gives learning context, emotion, and purpose. The first time a student designs a budget, conducts a lab that answers a real question, or speaks a new language to be understood, the learning becomes part of who they are. It sticks because it is useful and self-chosen, not just required.
Glasser’s Quality Schools movement pressed for classrooms where students do quality work by self-evaluating, revising, and producing artifacts that meet clear standards. That emphasis elevates learning from a transactional task to a craft. The reward shifts from external approval to intrinsic satisfaction: the pride of competence, the joy of curiosity satisfied, the freedom of being able to do something new.
For teachers, the message is to design experiences, not just deliver content. Projects with authentic audiences, internships, service learning, simulations, and labs create the conditions for deep understanding. Feedback becomes a conversation, not a judgment. For learners, the invitation is to chase usefulness and meaning, to test ideas in the world, to risk failure as part of growth.
Education, then, is a way of living that makes life richer. When learning is experienced, it transforms time spent in classrooms into capabilities, relationships, and choices that continue long after the test ends.
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| Topic | Learning |
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