So this is a post that has stuck with me for several days now. I think the questions you pose are very important, but an ever-increasingly difficult pill to swallow. Related to this topic, I recently heard a story that very much fits in line with what you are questioning:

How think ye? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?

And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.

We frequently have students that simply don’t fit our mold. They rebel, they whine, and quite often they dominate our time. Nevertheless, if our motives are pure, we would be the teachers to help them find their way – just as we would help those with whom we “jive”.

After all, are we not also recurrently in that precarious position of being the one that has gone astray?

I know I am – more often than I like to confess.

I have been exploring a different angle on “student voice” at Artichoke …. on being the “safe one” invited to represent “student opinion” by those with institutional authority …. I’m going to add a link to this post in the comments … it complements the ideas I want to explore well

It is fine to believe anything one wants but that doesn’t bend reality. We all know too many children who are so self-confident because they have one thing going for them that when they stumble, they can’t get up.

The boy is a fine speaker but the kick he gets from public speaking may be a drug that is insufficient in life. The message he delivers is filled with warm platitudes and makes people feel good.

However, as you point out there are lots of other kids who are different whose message might be, “Why can’t you believe n me, why aren’t I good enough as I am, and why must you try to make me someone you want me to be?” Well, the Departments of Education has no use for such ideas and will steamroll anything like this into an Orwellian exercise in forcing the kids into conforming absolutely to the government formula.

Another form of this message are the children who can’t speak for themselves and who might be saying, “I believe in myself as someone you aren’t relating to or as someone you would be horrified that I am.” And of course dealling with that is a whole ‘nother discussion.

But there is something deeply disingenuous about this stuff aside from the blatant ghost-writing. And that is that kids’ brains are not fully developed and their experiences are thin as Governors of Alaska. Even if this kid says stuff that is authentic, it is still just a kid talking.

The example that always strikes me are the child and teen evangelist preachers or witnesses to faith. Now, as a person who reads voraciously and takes all this stuff into consideration I always have a hard time claiming expertise and people I respect have similar stands.

The more you know, the less you’re sure. But every day there is some huckster claiming to *absolutely* know what Jesus, God, the Holy Books, the mystics, the prophets, and so on really mean or what *your* personal values should be. To me, this is fraud because it is not even qualified as speculative or a thought experiment by the speaker.

So when children lecture teachers or administrators on education, some of it is spot on co-incidentally and some of it isn’t but the kid is the last to know which is which. Listener beware.

- krasicki