Students as volunteers

Adrian Bruce has a posting in response to his reading of Stephen Covey's 'The seven habits of highly effective people'. He uses a graphic talking about treating others as volunteers. It states 'Imagine what we could achieve if management treated every person on staff as if they were a volunteer'

Adrian's spin on this was ‘ Imagine what an organisation could achieve if every person on staff was treated as a volunteer rather than a subordinate’.

What about this? 'Imagine what we could achieve if teachers/schools treated every student as if they were a volunteer'.

The root of this comes from my experience teaching in the Pitjantjatjara Lands some 25 odd years ago. The bottom line was that while students had to be at school by law, the reality was the students voted with their feet.