| Sumario: | In my estimation one of the leading figures in humanistic education is Dr. David Aspy. He is also the least recognized. Few educators, psychologists, or researchers in the field seem to know his name. Yet for well over a decade he and his colleagues have been pursuing, with great determination, one research goal. He has wanted to find out whether being human in the classroom has any measurable effects, and if so what these are. The progress he has made in achieving his goal is nothing short of amazing. To be able to give factual data about the impact of teachers' attitudes on learning, on problem solving ability, on classroom morale: to study these effects in every part of our country, in black classrooms and white, in classrooms in Israel and Canada and the Caribbean, is an enormous step forward in our solid knowledge. He has not stopped with research findings. He has asked the question as to whether teachers can change their attitudes so as to become not effective, and again he has hard data to prove that they can. I admire him because he is not a narrow researcher, but has the vision to see the implications of his work. It is mind-boggling, to say the least, to ponder his remark about the possibility of affecting international relations through the improvement of interpersonal skills. He helps us to see the sweeping significance and potential of humanistic education. I have profited from, and written about, his earlier work, but I am very grateful to him for giving us this article in which he and Dr. Roebuck present, in down-to-earth terms, the essence of more than a dozen years of work.
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