from

On Becoming a Person

by

Carl Rogers

(Embedded in the text are the following suggestions made by Rogers:

        1.    Do away with mandatory teaching. People would get

            together if they wanted to learn.

        2.    Do away with examinations, grades, and credits.

        3.    The use of self-discovered, self-appropriated methods

            of learning.

        4.    The removal of traditional teaching methods, which cause

            the individual to distrust his own experiences, and to

            stifle learning.

Rogers was a psychotherapist. He sees the student in the classroom and the client in therapy as both being engaged in journey of self-discovery, one that can be best accomplished by a warm, caring, and genuine facilitator. The result in both cases is growth, fulfillment, and internal positive self-regard.)

Contact With Problems

....significant learning occurs more readily in relation to situations perceived as problems....The student in the regular university course, and particularly in the required course, is apt to view the course as an experience in which he expects to remain passive or resentful or both, an experience which he certainly does not often see as relevant to his own problem.

Yet it has also been my experience that when a regular university class does perceive the course as an experience they can use to resolve problems which are of concern to them, the sense of release, and the thrust of forward movement is astonishing.

So the first implication for education might well be that we permit the student, at any level, to be in real contact with the relevant problems of his existence, so that he perceives problems and issues which he wishes to resolve.

....the task of the teacher is to create a facilitating classroom climate in which significant learning can take place.

The Teacher's Real-ness

Learning would be facilitated, it would seem, if the teacher is congruent. This involves the teacher's being the person that he is, and being openly aware of the attitudes he holds. It means that he feels acceptant toward his own feelings. Thus he becomes a real person in the relationship with his students. He can be enthusiastic about subjects he likes, and bored by topics he does not like. He can be angry, but he can also be sensitive or sympathetic. Because he accepts his feelings as his feelings, he has no need to impose them on his students, or to insist that they feel the same way. He is a person, not a faceless embodiment of a curricular requirement, or a sterile pipe through which knowledge is passed from one generation to the next.

Acceptance and Understanding

....significant learning may take place if the teacher can accept the student as he is, and can understand the feelings he possesses....the teacher who can warmly accept,  who can provide an unconditional positive regard, and who can empathize with the feelings of fear, anticipation, and discouragement which are involved in meeting new material, will have done a great deal toward wetting the conditions for learning.

....it is not only attitudes toward school work itself which are expressed, but feelings about parents, feelings of hatred for the brother or sister, feelings of concern about self --- the whole gamut of attitudes. Do such feelings have a right to exist openly in a school setting? It is my thesis that they do. They are related to the person's becoming, to his effective learning and effective functioning.....

Provision of Resources

In therapy the resources for learning one's self lie within....In education this is not true. There are many resources of knowledge, of techniques, or theory, which constitute raw material for use....these materials, these resources, (should) be made available to the students, not forced upon them. Here a wide range of ingenuity and sensitivity is an asset.

The Basic Motive

(The teacher's) basic reliance would be upon the self-actualizing tendency in his students. The hypothesis upon which he would build is that students who are in real contact with life problems wish to learn, want to grow, seek to find out, hope to master, desire to create. He would see his function as that of developing such a personal relationship with his students, and such a climate in his class room, that these natural tendencies would come to their fruition.