Nimitha’s Reviews > How Children Fail > Status Update

The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.

Did these people,as he had done,put on this personality deliberately?He became convinced that this was true.Subject peoples both appease their rulers and satisfy some part of their desire for human dignity by putting on a mask,by acting much more stupid&incompetent than they really are,by denying their rulers the full use of their intelligence&ability,by declaring their minds and spirits free of their enslaved bodies

After the war, the author did a good deal of work, in many parts of the world, with subject peoples; but not for some time did he recognize, in the personality of the "good black boy" of many African colonies, or the "good nigger"of the American South, the camp personality adopted during the war by himself and his fellow prisoners. When he first saw the resemblance, he was startled.

Teachers and schools tend to mistake good behavior for good character. What they prize above all else is docility, suggestibility; the child who will do what he is told; or even better, the child who will do what is wanted without even having to be told. They value most in children what children least value in themselves. Small wonder that their effort to build character is such a failure;

Knowledge, learning, understanding, are not linear. They are not little bits of facts lined up in rows or piled up one on top of another. A field of knowledge, whether it be math, English, history, science, music, or whatever, is a territory, and knowing it is not just a matter of knowing all the items in the territory, but of knowing how they relate to, compare with, and fit in with each other

Children who depend heavily on adult approval may decide that, if they can't have total success, their next-best bet is to have total failure. Perhaps, in using the giving or withholding of approval as a way of making children do what we want, we are helping to make these deliberate failers.