"I think it is totally wrong and terribly harmful if education is defined as acquiring knowledge"
About this Quote
William Glasser rejects the idea that schooling is mainly the storage of facts because it misunderstands how people learn and what they need to thrive. As a psychiatrist and architect of Choice Theory and Reality Therapy, he saw that change comes from doing, deciding, and relating, not from being told. When education is defined as acquiring knowledge, students become containers to be filled. The result is rote learning, shallow recall on tests, and little transfer to life. Knowledge sits inert, unconnected to judgment, skill, or purpose.
He argued that human beings are motivated from within by needs for belonging, competence and power, freedom, and fun. Traditional, knowledge-heavy classrooms often frustrate these needs: relationships are secondary to coverage, power is externalized through grades and compliance, freedom is limited by rigid curricula, and fun is treated as a distraction. The harm appears as disengagement, anxiety, cheating, and the quiet erosion of curiosity. Students learn to play school rather than to learn, mistaking performance for understanding.
Glasser did not dismiss knowledge; he insisted that it matters only as it is used. Education should organize experiences around solving meaningful problems, producing quality work, and reflecting on results. Teachers become managers of conditions under which students practice and improve, not mere deliverers of information. Assessment shifts from sorting by right answers to judging quality, growth, and usefulness. When students see why something matters and have agency in mastering it, knowledge becomes a tool rather than a burden.
This stance places him in conversation with progressive and constructivist traditions that emphasize active learning. It also challenges policy regimes that reduce learning to measurable bits. Defining education as growth in competence, character, and connection reframes knowledge as one ingredient in a larger recipe. The goal is not that students can recite what is known, but that they can think, collaborate, and act wisely with what they know.
He argued that human beings are motivated from within by needs for belonging, competence and power, freedom, and fun. Traditional, knowledge-heavy classrooms often frustrate these needs: relationships are secondary to coverage, power is externalized through grades and compliance, freedom is limited by rigid curricula, and fun is treated as a distraction. The harm appears as disengagement, anxiety, cheating, and the quiet erosion of curiosity. Students learn to play school rather than to learn, mistaking performance for understanding.
Glasser did not dismiss knowledge; he insisted that it matters only as it is used. Education should organize experiences around solving meaningful problems, producing quality work, and reflecting on results. Teachers become managers of conditions under which students practice and improve, not mere deliverers of information. Assessment shifts from sorting by right answers to judging quality, growth, and usefulness. When students see why something matters and have agency in mastering it, knowledge becomes a tool rather than a burden.
This stance places him in conversation with progressive and constructivist traditions that emphasize active learning. It also challenges policy regimes that reduce learning to measurable bits. Defining education as growth in competence, character, and connection reframes knowledge as one ingredient in a larger recipe. The goal is not that students can recite what is known, but that they can think, collaborate, and act wisely with what they know.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
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