Every single major push in education has made it worse and right

In the solemn voice of William Glasser we hear a cry of warning: “Every single major push in education has made it worse and right now it’s really bad because everything we’ve done is de-humanizing education. It’s destroying the possibility of the teacher and the student having a warm, friendly, intellectual relationship.” These words strike like a bell of lament across the halls of learning. They are not spoken in scorn, but in grief—for what was meant to nourish the soul has been twisted into a mechanism that starves it. Glasser reminds us that true education is not the piling up of facts, but the communion of minds and the meeting of hearts.

To call education de-humanized is to accuse it of losing its soul. When learning becomes numbers, scores, and lifeless metrics, the flame of curiosity flickers and dies. The teacher is no longer a guide, but a functionary; the student is no longer a seeker of wisdom, but a cog in the machinery of systems. What is lost is the very essence of teaching: the warmth of a voice, the spark in an eye, the gentle encouragement that whispers, “You can.” The ancients knew this truth well. Did not Aristotle walk with Alexander, speaking not in formulas of statecraft, but in dialogue beneath the open sky? It was the relationship that made the knowledge live.

History bears witness to the danger of forgetting this. In the rigid academies of the Prussian system, children were trained not as thinkers but as obedient citizens, drilled to march in step with the needs of the state. Knowledge was not shared as light, but imposed as discipline. Though efficient in producing order, it withered the joy of learning, and its echoes still shape classrooms today. Glasser, beholding this legacy, cries out that we have pursued efficiency at the cost of humanity, and in doing so, we have stripped the sacred bond between teacher and student of its dignity.

Yet there are shining examples of the opposite path. Recall the story of Socrates, who wandered Athens not with textbooks or examinations, but with questions. He treated each youth not as a vessel to be filled, but as a soul to be awakened. His students loved him, not because he handed down decrees of knowledge, but because he drew wisdom out of their own hearts. Their relationship with him was not cold, but alive, infused with warmth and respect. And though the city condemned him, his influence endured, precisely because it was personal, human, and bound in friendship.

Glasser’s lament is therefore also a call to arms. He teaches that education cannot thrive if it forgets the humanity of both teacher and learner. Without compassion, knowledge becomes sterile; without friendship, intellect becomes arrogance. The warm, friendly, intellectual relationship he describes is not a luxury, but the very ground on which true learning stands. If the bond is broken, the temple of wisdom collapses, no matter how grand its architecture of systems and reforms.

The lesson for us is this: let us resist the temptation to measure learning only in numbers and rankings. Let us honor the teachers who take time to know their students, who see them not as statistics but as souls. And let us, as learners, cherish the presence of mentors who walk beside us, not above us. For the human bond is the seed from which wisdom grows, and no machine can replace it.

In practice, let each teacher strive to look beyond the gradebook and into the face of the student, seeking to know the heart as well as the mind. Let each student remember that knowledge is not only in the book, but in the friendship of those who guide them. And let all who design systems of learning place first the human encounter, for without it, education becomes but a hollow shell.

Thus, Glasser’s words resound as prophecy: if education is to live again, it must be re-humanized. Let the world remember that the bond of teacher and student is sacred, and that true wisdom flows not from mandates and metrics, but from the warmth of shared discovery. Only then shall learning be restored to its rightful glory—a living flame, passed hand to hand, heart to heart, through all the generations of time.