What characterizes good students? How do they orient themselves toward
their work in school? How do they go about getting things done? Answering
these questions will give us direction in helping students become better at
supporting their own education and our work as teachers. As you read what
follows, notice how my values are reflected in the profile I sketch of the best
kind of secondary student. I am not describing just any school achiever
here. Rather, I am describing a student who is happy and productive in
school whom I also respect. There are some grade-grabbers and dutiful
pluggers who do not meet my standard of a truly good student. They are
good class-takers, and that certainly is not all bad-better that than
flunking and learning nothing. But still, I have decided I might as well be
guided by the image of a student I can believe in.

I start with what the best students are like as people, rather than whether
they can manage time effectively or something of that sort. Time manage-
ment skills, note-taking capability, those kinds of things, are undoubtedly
important, but here I am pointing to -- and I believe this is where we have to
begin -- personal qualities or characteristics that these young people possess.
I define the way they hold the meaning of their involvement in school. I
describe their fundamental posture as people and as students. I consider this
useful to do because, for one thing, I see schools trying to teach achieve-
ment skills and content learnings to students who are not achievement-type
people in the first place. Many students simply have no personal frame of
reference that allows them to take in and use what we are trying to impart
to them. In my view, our task with more than a few students -- and by our
I mean the whole of society and not just schools -- is to bring about a shift

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