Classroom management is big business. Entire schools or school districts are known to have subscribed to one management system or another. Teachers must, of course, make thoughtful and very careful decisions about how they will approach the learning environment, and, as might be expected, a voluminous amount of reading exists to inform and to persuade teachers to adopt one management approach over another. The stakes are high. Decisions about how teachers decide to approach classroom management have everything to do with the social and intellectual growth of the child, the quality of life and learning in the classroom and, by extension, with the school, the parents, the community and the larger society in which we live. In this article, the author describes how teachers who subscribe to a traditional management approach tend to view students, and how this impacts learning and students' attitudes and behavior; i.e., traditional classroom management often implies that students are rarely active participants in their own education. The author offers suggestions on more inclusive styles of classroom management that can create a more positive learning environment that will also help young citizens become confident participants in a democratic society. (Contains 4 endnotes.)