Teaching and Learning - Quotes

• 'It's about teaching and it's about time.' Book Title

• 'we know at lot more now than the 'last time around'- the 1960s and 1970s - about how to work for smart schools... ' 'The smart school finds it's foundation in a rich and evolving set of principles about human thinking and learning.' David Perkins, 'Smart Schools.'.

• 'education ultimately depends on what happens in classrooms... between teachers and learners. That is fundamental.'... 'I hope that teachers will discover the optimism and direction to combat the energy - draining pressures and frustrations of most educational settings.' David Perkins, 'Smart Schools.'

• 'Do not confine your children to your own learning for they were born in another time.' Hebrew Proverb

• 'Every parent's deepest wish is that their children are self sufficient, happy, and able to live a full life.' Peter Block

• 'To be a teacher you must be a prophet - because you are trying to prepare people for a world thirty to fifty years into the future.' Gordon Brown MIT

• 'Smart people don't learn... because they have too much invested in proving what they know and avoiding being seen as not knowing.' Chris Agyris

• 'The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you are learning you're not old.' Rosalyn Sussman Yalow US Medical Physicist

• 'The world cannot afford to lose the talents of half it's people if we are to solve the many problems that beset us.' Rosalyn Sussman Yalow US Medical Physicist

• 'Old age is compulsory, wisdom is optional.' Anon

• 'You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizons. The more things you love, the more things you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about.' Ethyl Barrymore Actress

• 'Teachers must be encouraged - I almost said 'freed', to pursue an education that strives for depth of understanding.' Howard Gardner

• 'teachers and administrators sleepwalk through their responsibilities, dulled and discouraged by the endless pressures and problems.' David Perkins 'Smart Schools.'

• 'Until recently, education has had it backwards, caring little for the teacher... and enormously about the content. Yet it is a gifted teacher who can infect a generation with the excitement of learning.' Aquarian Conspiracy

• 'Education must develop in youth the capabilities for engaging in intense concentrated involvement in an activity.' James Coleman 1977

• 'My education was a prolonged and concerted attack on my individuality' Neil Crofts Author Authenticity

• 'I was born exited' Mark Twain

• 'Learning is a matter of intensity not elapsed time.' Tom Peters , 'Re - Imagine'

• 'There is a road from the eye to the head that does not go through the intellect.' G K Chesterton

• 'We must give more attention to the interplay between the science of teaching - pedagogy - and the art of teaching... A teacher must be anchored in pedagogy and blend imagination, creativity and inspiration into the teaching learning process to ignite a passion for learning in student.' Peyton Williams, President ASCD 2003

• 'We can whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children... we already know more than we need to know in order to do that.' Ron Edmonds Educator

• 'Having no alternative we were born creative.' Aquarian Conspiracy

• 'Human beings start out as butterflies and end up in cocoons.' Anon

• 'Unfortunately schools are no help because they teach us not to make connections... There should be a few people at least... pulling things together.' Edward Hall Anthropologist

• 'When Abraham Maslow asked a college class whether anyone had expectations of greatness, no one responded. 'Who else then', he replied dryly.' In 'Aquarian Conspiracy'.

• 'How can you do new math with an old math mind.' Charlie Brown /Peanuts

• 'The first problem for all of us, men and woman, is not to learn, but to unlearn.' Gloria Steinem US Feminist

• 'Teachers who do a bad job with old tools are likely to do a worse job with strange new tools.' Anon Educator

• 'The young child approaching a new subject or anew problem is like the scientist operating at the edge of his chosen field.' Jerome Bruner

• 'Good teaching is forever being on the cutting edge of a child's competence'. Jerome Bruner 86

• 'The teacher's role in discussion is to keep it going along fruitful lines - be moderating, guiding, correcting and arguing like one more students.' Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal

• 'what a child can do today with assistance, she will be able to do by herself tomorrow'. Lev Vygotsky.

• 'The metaphor ( coaching) with sports is meant quite seriously... the coach stands back , observes the performance, and provides guidance. The coach applauds strengths, identifies weaknesses, points up principles, offers guiding and often inspiring imagery, and decides what kind of practice to emphasize.' David Perkins 'Smart Schools.'

• 'Expert tutors often do not help very much. They hang back letting the student manage as much as possible. And when things go awry, rather than help directly they raise questions: 'Could you explain this step again? How did you... ?' Mark Lepper Stanford Psychologist

• 'The difference between reform and transformation is as if we have been trying to attach wings to a caterpillar... it is high time we freed ourselves of attachment to old forms and eased the flight of the unfettered human mind.' 'Aquarian Conspiracy'

• 'No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in their mode of thought.' John Stuart Mills.

• 'Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.' Douglas Adams, Author 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'

• 'To change your reality you have to change your inner thoughts.' David Bohm Physicist

• 'One of the saddest things about US education is that the wisdom of our most successful teachers is lost to the profession when they retire.' John Dewey

• I discovered the brutally simple motivation behind the development of impositions of all systematic instructional programmes and tests - lack of trust that teachers can teach and students can learn.' Frank Smith 'Insult to Intelligence'

• 'The too soft teacher reinforces the learner's natural wish to retreat and stay safe... the teacher must know when to let the learner struggle... we must not be spared our learning. Risk brings its own rewards.' Aquarian Conspiracy

• 'In every story I have heard, good teachers share one trait: a strong sense of personal identity infuses their work'. Parker Palmer 'Courage to Teach'.

• 'All true thoughts have been thought through already a thousand times; but to make them truly yours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.' Goethe

• 'Time given to thought is the greatest timesaver of all'. Norman Cousins

• 'The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming? Somerset Maughan

• 'Don't just do something, stand there.' Zen saying

• 'Some people are making such thorough plans for rainy days that they aren't enjoying today's sunshine.' William Feather US Author

• 'Only the mediocre are always at their best.' Somerset Maughan

• 'Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we were never able to do.' Peter Senge

• ' The biggest thing about being someone is imajunation. Before you can be something, you must imajun it.' Fifth Grader quoted by S Papert

• 'each individual brain is more like a unique and unimaginably dense rain forest, teeming with growth and decay. It is less like a programmed machine than an ecological habitat that mimics the evolution of life itself.' Prof Edleman Nobel Prize winner

• 'Learning is spontaneous, unpredictable, fun, passionate, dangerous.' Bowring - Carr and Burnham West UK Educators

• 'A child's attitude towards everything is an artist's attitude.' Willa Cather US Novelist

• 'Art should simplify.' Willa Cather US Novelist

• 'We don't have to make human beings smart. They are born smart. All we have to do is stop doing things that make them stupid.' John Holt

• 'Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves'. Piaget

• 'Morpheus: 'I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one who must walk through it' The Matrix (Film)

• 'School improvement is most surely and thoroughly achieved when teachers engage in frequent, continuous and increasingly concrete talk about teaching practices... capable of distinguishing one practice and it's virtue from another.' Judith Warren Little Education Researcher

• Of a gifted teacher (she) 'has an unfailing heart and eye for magical classrooms and who loses sleep over any sliver of work at less than the highest quality'. Carol Ann Tomlinson 'The Differentiated Classroom

• ' The key is to replace a belief in 'experts' who 'deliver' knowledge of what good teaching is to workshops with communities of teachers who learn through ongoing collaboration and practice.' Dennis Sparks Nat Staff Dev Centre (US)

• 'The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive. It begins earlier and lasts longer' Edward T Hall ( Anthropologist)

• 'Out of the questions of students come most of the creative ideas and discoveries'. Ellen Langer

• 'To be a teacher you must be a prophet - because you are trying to prepare people for a world thirty to fifty years into the future.' Gordon Brown former Dean MIT

• 'Many children struggle in schools... because the way they are being taught is the way is incompatible with the way they learn.' Peter Senge

• 'If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it.' Mao Zedong

• 'A teacher's failure to create an intellectually reflective, engagement for learning is not simply malpractice but it is immoral particularly for students who cannot withdraw.' John Goodland Educator

• 'Most learning disabilities are actually teaching disabilities on the part of the school.' Retired Teacher

• I believe babies are born as innovative personalities... But our social processes work to stamp out exploration and questioning.' Jay Forrestor Prof MIT

• 'All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning community depends on realizing the capacity to develop each gift'. Peter Senge

• 'Learning to use your intuition is learning to be your own teacher. Vaughan

• 'Being 'educated' means knowing how little I really know.' Carol T Lloyd

• 'As your island of knowledge grows, so does your shoreline of wonder.' Anon

• 'Good teaching is forever being on the cutting edge of a child competence'. Jerome Bruner

• 'Let the main object... to seek and to find a method of instruction, by which teachers may teach less, but learners learn more.' John Amos Comenius

• 'I cured the patient but he died' is as logical as saying 'I taught the pupil, but she did not learn.' Bowring -Carr and John Burnham West UK Educators

• 'The open teacher ... establishes rapport and resonance, sensing unspoken needs, conflicts, hopes and fears. Respecting the learners autonomy, the teacher spends more time helping to articulate the urgent questions than demanding the right answers.' Aquarian Conspiracy

• 'Progressive white teaches seem to say to their black students 'Let me help you find your voice. I promise not to criticize one note as you search for your song'. But the black teachers say 'I've heard your song loud and clear. Now I want to teach you to harmonize with the rest of the world.'' Delpit 'The Silenced Dialogue'

• 'teachers who respond to their children's message, and not to their mistakes, appeared to help their children more.' John Smith Warwick Elley NZ Educators

• 'The open teacher helps the learner discover patterns and connections, fosters strange new possibilities, and is a midwife to ideas.' Aquarian Conspiracy

• 'We trust the teacher who gives us stress, pain or drudgery when we need it. And we resent the teacher who... takes us into deep water when we are frightened of the shallow'. Aquarian Conspiracy

• 'Come to the edge', he said. They said, 'We are afraid'. 'Come to the edge', he saidThey came. He pushed them... and they flew. Guillaume Apollinaire Poet

• Before we choose our tools and techniques we must choose our dreams and values.' Anon

• 'If you want to make a mark you have to take a risk.' Terrance E Deal

• 'After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world depends' Wallace Stevens

• 'Studies of high school gradates rarely find any correlation between recognition in high school and recognition thereafter... The term s are too different. What worked in high school seldom works later... Those not tested by setbacks when young may never learn how to rebound from defeat.' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever makes the Most Mistakes Wins.'

• 'Most schools do a remarkably poor job of recognizing and rewarding future achievers... The standards of success in school have very little to do with standards thereafter' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins.'

• What did predict economic success was a willingness to take chances, most educational systems honor those who play it safe... The ones who do take chances have a hard time in school and are often penalized for their independent ways'. Farson and Keyes.

• 'We are creating a one size fits all system that needlessly brands many young people as failures, when they might thrive if offered a different education whose progress was measured differently. Paradoxically we're embracing standardized tests just when the economy is eliminating standardized jobs.' Robert Reich Former US Labor Secretary.

• 'There are two reasons why people learn one because someone said you can't and the other because someone said you can.' Howard Wilson Retired NZ Principal

• 'The learner's attitude is thus an essential factor to determine the direction of his learning, whether he shall learn to do or not learn to do.' William Kilpatrick, Prof of Education 1917

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