ABSTRACT
Many elementary classrooms today utilize small groups of desks throughout the room, and this is certainly an improvement. The elementary school is a great place to begin the process of removing the instrumentality that currently defines the public-school experience. Certainly work is an important dimension of life and therefore ought to be a topic for extended study and deliberation in public schools. Education is a serious business, and this ought to be a kind of first maxim for everything that happens in schools. The psychological damage accompanies the extensive use of punishment in elementary schools is almost conventional wisdom today. One of the greatest educational contributions an elementary teacher can make is to socialize students into recognizing that talk—more accurately, deliberation—is and must be a predictable and indispensable part of schooling. Students require socialization to learn the skills of responsible, courteous, and conversational deliberation.
