"Academic Achievement Discourse" (1)

Assumption # 1 underlying the "Academic Achievement Discourse": "Academic content and skills are the most important thing to be learned" (From "The Best Schools", by Thomas Armstrong). 

This leaves out whatever is considered non-academic, usually right-brain stuff; it ignores whatever is not strictly handled by our rational brain, as if people (especially students and teachers) could leave out of the door their emotional and reptilian brains. This assumption, still prevalent, is based also on a compartmentalized conception of what a person is: on one hand, our rational side, which is (and must be) the school business; on the other hand, our emotional side, which is (and must be) the family business. The result? The belief that teachers must teach, and families must educate, a sort of division of labor that brings, amont other things, unnecessary difficulties and complications to the much needed communication between teachers and families. Even more, quite often this communication ends up being a discusion about who should do what and how from which the student, who should be right at the center of the conversation, ends up disappearing.