Kirsten Olson Quotes & Sayings

In addition to labeling kids who learn differently as problematic, sometimes defective, most schools classify, track, and categorize students from very early ages. As an abundance of research studies confirm, these classifications tend to become self-perpetuating and self-confirming. My interviewees illuminate the ways in which grades, tests, and opportunities to learn are often arbitrary or related to class, race, and gender. In the supposed meritocracy of schooling, these markers and estimations have profound impact, not just structuring how we fit into the learning hierarchy of an individual classroom, but who we are who whom we believe we will become. — Kirsten Olson

The middle class and upper middle class are highly attached to the institution of school explicitly as a sorting mechanism, as a way of justifying privileges of which middle-class members are already central beneficiaries. These critics suggest that the entire notion of schools as meritocracies actually reifies and reinforces class privilege--making those whom school rewards (those who already have a lot of benefits) feel they deserve the privileges they have. — Kirsten Olson

Without ongoing training in tailoring instruction to individual learners (and support in doing so), "fault" for underperformance or disengagement from learning is frequently shifted to the child: The child is lazy, has an attitude problem, or refuses to work up to his or her potential. The child is enormously vulnerable in this system. — Kirsten Olson

But if you believe that adults can 'make' children learn well - in the absence of or in defiance of a child's inner sense of confident engagement with the power of discovery and mastery - then, in my view, you are placing that child at great risk of failure as a learner. — Kirsten Olson

Like jilted and disappointed lovers, some of my students just want to be left alone. — Kirsten Olson

In fact, I think that our society expects schools to get students to the point where they do things only for outside rewards. People who perform tasks for their internal reasons are hard to control. Now, I don't think teachers get up in the morning and say to themselves, 'I', going to go to school today and take away all those young people's internal motivations' ... but that's exactly what often happens. — Kirsten Olson