Educational Quotes
Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation
and social standing, never can bring about a reform.
Susan B. Anthony
EDUCATION AND THE PROCESS OF EDUCATING IS A TOTAL INTEGRAL, CONTEXTUAL
SITUATION WHICH INCLUDES STUDENTS, TEACHERS, PARENTS, ADMINISTRATION, AND
ENVIRONMENT.
Jean Huston
Everything depends upon the quality of experience . . . just as no man lives or dies to himself, so no experience lives and dies to itself.
Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience.
The central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experience that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences.
John Dewey, 1938
When I think about all the crap
I learned in high school . . .
. . . . . it's a wonder I can think at all.
Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner; put
yourself in his place so that you may understand . . . . . . . . . . . .
. what he learns and the way he understands it.
Kierkegaard
Any educational efforts may be said to be UNSUCCESSFUL
to the extent that student achievement is normally distributed.
Benjamin Bloom
The desire to know is far more important than achievement and/or performance
measures.
Caine & Caine
Sometimes one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring
a certain maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing generation.
But that is not right.
Knowledge is dead.
The school, however, serves the living.
It should develop in the young individuals those qualities and capabilities
which are of value for the welfare of the commonwealth.
But that does not mean that individuality should be destroyed and the
individual become a mere tool of the community, like a bee or an ant.
For a community of standardized individuals without personal originality
and personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development.
On the contrary, the aim must be the training of independently acting
and thinking individuals, who however, see in the service of the community
their highest life problem.
Albert Einstein, 1936
I have need to be all on fire,
for I have mountains of ice about me to melt
William Lloyd Garrison An abolitionist in Boston over a
century ago
It is the supreme art of the teacher
to awaken joy in creative expression
and knowledge
Albert Einstein
The teacher is one who made two ideas grow where only one grew before
Elbert Hubbard
The man who can make hard things easy is the educator
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students
Alfie Kohn
It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet
entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation,
stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin
without fail
Albert Einstein
Education, properly understood, is that which teaches discernment
Joseph Roux
for someone thoughtful
it only takes one smile to offer welcome
and blessed be the person who will share it.
it only takes one moment
to be helpful
and blessed be the person who will spare it.
it only takes one joy
to lift a spirit
and blessed be the person who will give it.
it only takes one life
to make a difference
and blessed be the person who will live it.
amanda bradley
Prejudice is a burden which
confuses the past,
threatens the future,
and renders the present inaccessible
Maya Angelou
I have visited sweatshops, factories, and crowded slums. If I could not
see it, I could smell it.
The foundation of society is laid upon a basis of . . . individualism, conquest
and exploitation . . . A social order such as this, built upon such wrong
and]basic principles, is bound to retard the development of all.
The output of a cotton mill or a coal mine is considered of greater importance
than the production of healthy, happy-hearted and free human beings.
We, the people, are not free.
Our democracy is but a name.
Helen Keller
I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the
social or political equality of the white and black races . . . I will say
in addition that there is a physical difference between the white and black
races which, I suppose, will forever forbid the two races living together
upon terms of social and political equality; and in as much as they cannot
so live, that while they do remain together there must be a position of
the superiors and the inferiors; and that I, as much as any other man, am
in favor of the superior being assigned to the white man.
Abraham Lincoln 1858
If the student-written text is to go beyond the stories about generals and millionaires and queens and kings, teachers have to help their students, in one way or other, to discover and record the voices of the common men and women who reflect the real life out of which all history is made. This is especially the case in writing about minorities, as well as about women.
Our tendency is to attempt to make up for the errors of the past by listing (and praising) as many notable blacks, or women, as we can possibly "collect"--in order, it seems, to struggle back in kind against all of those white male Anglo-Saxon figures who now dominate the school curricula.
We continue, however, to write about important people, prize-winning
people, blacks of grandeur, women of great fire, fame or wit. We do not
write about ordinary people.
Jonathon Kozol On Being a Teacher
America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today
Martin Luther King June, 1967
I Taught Them All
I have taught high school for 10 years. During that time, I have given assignments, among others, to a murderer, an evangelist, a pugilist, a thief, and an imbecile.
The murderer was a quiet little boy who sat on the front seat and regarded me with pale blue eyes; the evangelist, easily the most popular boy in school, had the lead in the junior play; the pugilist lounged by the window and let loose at intervals a raucous laugh that startled even the geraniums; the thief was a gay-hearted Lothario with a song on his lips; and the imbecile, a soft-eyed little animal seeking the shadows.
The murderer awaits death in the state penitentiary; the evangelist has lain a year now in the village churchyard; the pugilist lost an eye in a brawl in Hong Kong; the thief, by standing on tiptoe, can see the windows of my room from the county jail; and the once gentle-eyed little moron beats his head against a padded wall in the state asylum.
All of these pupils once sat in my room, sat and looked at me gravely
across worn brown desks. I must have been a great help to those pupils--I
taught them the rhyming scheme of the Elizabethan sonnet and how to diagram
a complex sentence.
Naomi White 1937
Education is developing:
"Insight into soul-action, ability to discriminate the genuine
from the sham and capacity to further one and discourage the other"
John Dewey
I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element
in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's
my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous
power to make a student's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture
or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be
escalated or de-escalated and a student humanized or de-humanized.
Hiam Ginott
The "Hidden Curriculum" Barrell (1991)
•The teacher "teaches" and the students "sit and
listen" or learn passively.
•There is one "right answer" to any question, and it is in
the book to be read.
•The answer to most questions can be given in one or two words, and
no one will challenge you to go deeper.
•Books and teachers are always "right", and we learn only
from them, not from any other resource in the room, such as our friends.
•If we wait long enough, a teacher will answer her own question, so
we won't have to do much work. The teacher is the only one worth listening
to.
•If we ask enough questions about a difficult assignment, we can get
the teacher to make it easier and less demanding.
•"Thinking" is not something we talk about.
•If I memorize enough stuff, I can get a good grade.
•Most tasks and tests will demand recall of isolated pieces of information,
and I will not have to show how concepts and ideas are related or how facts
illustrate underlying principles.
To say that you have taught when students haven't learned is to say you
have sold when no one has bought. But how can you know that students have
learned without spending hours correcting tests and papers? . . . check
students understanding while you are teaching (not at 10 o'clock at night
when you're correcting papers) so you don't move on with unlearned material
that can accumulate like a snowball and eventually engulf the student in
confusion and despair.
Madeline Hunter, 1989
Only through education does one come to be dissatisfied with his own knowldedge, and only through teaching others does one come to realize the uncomfortable inadequacy of his knowledge. Being dissatisfied with his own knowledge, one then realizes that the trouble lies with himself, and realizing the uncomfortable inadequacy of his knowledge one then feels stimulated to improve himself. Therefore, it is said, "the processes of teaching and learning stimulate one another." Confucius, circa 500 BCE
I wake up every morning determined both to change
the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning
the day a little difficult.
E. B. White
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand
something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.
--Doris Lessing
Pick Battles big enough to matter, small enough
to win
--Jonathon Kozol
What Teacher Education Programs forget to tell their candidates:
•A teacher cannot be all things to all people
•You are not a "bad person" if you are not always able to
meet all the needs of all your students
•You are a powerful and compelling figure in the lives of your students
•In recalling their school years, students mostly remember their teachers,
and not the courses they took
•You need to find a "critical friend" whom you can trust
to serve as a sounding board
•At times students can be very cruel, difficult, and mean-spirited
•It is a mistake to personalize a student's unacceptable behavior
•Teachers lover their students as their parents love them--but in a
different way and for a different reason
•Few people will ever appreciate the amount of time and effort teachers
give to their teaching
•By choosing to be a teacher, you have entered an emotionally dangerous
profession
•You are both a role model and change agent
•You need to pay attention to both your physical and emotional well-being
•Teaching is not like inducing a chemical reaction, but more like reating
a painting, or planting a garden, or writing a friendly letter.
•Teaching is a complicated business because students are such unexpected
blends of character, personality, and background
•Most of the significant advances in civilization have been the result
of the work of teachers
•Teaching is an act of faith in the promise of the future
•Teaching is a way of life
James Marran Social Studies Dept.
Chair
New Trier High School, Winnetka, Ill.
1. Declare a five-year moratorium on the use of all textbooks
2. Have “English” teachers “teach” Math, Math teachers
English, Social Studies teachers science, Science teachers Art, and so on.
3. Transfer all elementary teachers to high school and vice versa.
4. Require every teacher who thinks he knows his “subject” well
to write a book on it.
5. Dissolve all “subjects”, “courses”, and “course
requirements”.
6. Limit each teacher to three declarative sentences per class, and 15 interrogatives.
7. Prohibit teachers from asking any questions they already know the answers
to.
8. Declare a moratorium on all tests and grades.
9. Require all teachers to undergo some form of psychotherapy as part of
their inservice training
10. Classify teachers according to their ability and make the lists public.
11. Require all teachers to take a test prepared by students on what the
students know.
12. Make every class an elective and withhold a teacher's monthly check
if his students do not show any interest in going to next month's classes.
13. Require every teacher to take a one-year leave of absence every fourth
year to work in some other “field” other than education.
14. Require each teacher to provide some sort of evidence that he or she
has had a loving relationship with at least one other human being.
15. Require that all the graffiti accumulated in the school toilets be reproduced
on large paper and be hung in the school halls.
16. There should be a general prohibition against the use of the following
words and phrases:
Teach, syllabus, covering ground, I.Q., makeup, test, disadvantaged, gifted,
accelerated, enhancement, course, grade, score, human nature, dumb, college
material, and administrative necessity.