on teaching and learning ... to be free

In an older article by Carl Rogers (yes that Carl Rogers, psychologist), he characterizes his "hope for education" which consists of "learning to be free." Here is an excerpt from the concluding paragraph and it expresses in a few lines how I plan to approach my own teaching and learning at ESI-SIS. In spite of the therapeutic overtones, I hope you can appreciate the core message:

Nevertheless, it is my personal conviction [and mine also] that individual rigidity and constricted learning are the surest roads to world catastrophe. It seems clear that if we prefer to develop flexible, adaptive, creative individuals, we have a beginning knowledge as to how this may be done. We know how to establish, in an educational situation, the conditions and the psychological climate which initiate a process of learning to be free.

Reference: Rogers, Carl (1963). Learning to be free. Pastoral Psychology, 14:1, February, 7-12. Available through uOttawa Library - E-journals