“Teachers – and this holds especially of the stronger and better teachers – tend to rely upon their personal strong points to hold the child to his work, and thereby to substitute their personal influence for that of subject matter as a motive for study. The teacher finds by experience that his own personality is often effective where the power of the subject to command attention is almost nil; then he utilizes the former more and more, until the pupil’s relation to the teacher almost takes the place of his relation to the subject. In this way, the teacher’s personality may become, for the pupil, a source of personal dependence and weakness, an influence that renders the pupil indifferent to the value of the subject for its own sake.”

John Dewey

How We Think