Humanize Schools

About the Book

We were warned many years ago what we were doing to the children in our schools.  We had books -- Nat Hentoff's "Our Children are Dying," Jonathon Kozol's "Death at an Early Age," and Charles Silberman's "Crisis in the Classroom."

Open classrooms were tried, but the children were not given the responsibility and structure they needed, so they did not learn as they should. Then we reverted to the old ways that said children must be made to do what adults want them to do by using punishments. The tough methods made children angry and unable to learn.

In 1968, after completing a study on the application of new information technology and society, Anthony G. Ottinger, Harvard University, said,"Few observers of contemporary American education will quarrel with the need for reform, or with the conclusion that the educational establishment is almost ideally designed to resist change" (Saturday Review, May 18, 1968).

We were warned again, more specifically. An article in Life Magazine, May 19, 1972, quotes Judge Julia Wise Polier, who in 36 years on the bench had heard more children's cases than any other jurist in the nation: "When I put my arm around the boy, I could feel him react. He wants to be loved.  It's getting worse.  There's so little help from any caring adult for these children. They don't get it in schools, in the church or at home.

"A child -- a human being -- reaches out for love. And gets hit. And he reaches out again, and gets hit again. And he keeps reaching, and every time he's denied. And then finally, defensively, he stops reaching. And in no longer looking for love, he loses the ability to love, and his ability to feel. The capacity to feel for another person is cut off, and he can destroy other people without reaction. And then you get rapes and robberies and murder. Take this little boy -- he's tried to reach out and be loved. He's made a desperate effort. And he's been turned off. How long can you expect a child to keep reaching?"

And in our schools, new teachers are advised. Don't smile before Christmas. If you do, you won't have control of your class. And if you don't, you won't have a job.  What kind of atmosphere is that for a child, a child we want to grow up with compassion for others?

But teachers can't show love as classrooms are organized now because they have two tasks that conflict with each other. If children are to learn, they must have hope and belief in their ability to learn.

"If you can make a child believe he is able to learn, he will learn," said the professor, Dr. Uvaldo Palomares, an educational psychologist who had been considered mentally retarded when young. Helen DeLong Green went back to her third-grade class, tried it and children learned. Before that, some had not in spite of her extra efforts.

But teachers can't teach unless there is order in the classroom.

It is impossible to build children up psychologically so they will learn, and keep them subjugated by using punishments to keep order at the same time in the same room.

By then it seemed clear to her that it is not just what we do to children with our punishments, interventions and calls to parents. It is what we fail to do in providing love and warmth. They often don't get it anywhere as they grow up, certainly not in our schools as they are now.

And so began 30 years of trying to find a solution for the problems in our schools. First, she knew what should be done but not how it could be done. Later, she knew how it could be done. Still later, she knew how it could be done better.

One simple change in the way classrooms are set up would make it possible to provide that love and warmth, but adults seem to prefer harsh control.

But her plan was too different from the way things have always been done to be accepted and used. Publishers were supportive and sometimes even enthusiastic, but her book did not fit

About the Author

Helen DeLong Green taught, substituted, observed, volunteered and simply listened in classrooms in California, inner-city Chicago and Florida. And she took careful notes of what her fellow teachers were doing — and not doing. For 30 years she has concentrated on finding a way to solve the problems of American elementary schools, and to prevent those problems from causing illiteracy and violence. Her plan to reorganize classrooms was developed and changed through the years. And it is presented in Humanize Schools with detailed explanations for implementation. She believes that tough classroom methods only make problems worse. “Punishments are not needed,” she says. “Children will behave well if we simply change the way we treat them.” The change she proposes would not cost any more money or require extra training for teachers. And it would enable the teachers who are deemed “not tough enough” under today’s system to keep their jobs, teach and be role models for our children.