It's Back to School Week at Quotes of the Day (see note). It takes quite a few folks playing different roles to provide a good education. For example, librarians and administrators, not to mention the long-suffering janitors. (Personally, I remember spending a lot of time with the school shrink.) But the heart of the matter comes down to that one person at the front of the class: the Teacher.
Today's Quotes:
A teacher who is attempting
to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering
on a cold iron.
- Horace Mann, 1796 - 1859
The close observer soon discovers
that the teacher's task is not to implant facts but to place the subject
to be learned in front of the learner and, through sympathy, emotion, imagination,
and patience, to awaken in the learner the restless drive for answers and
insights which enlarge the personal life and give it meaning.
- Nathan M. Pusey, 1907 - 2001
The role of the teacher remains
the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrusts
her most precious resource, her children; and asks that they be prepared
... to face the rigors of individual participation in a democratic society.
- Shirley Mount Hufstedler
The true teacher defends
his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust.
He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will
have no disciple.
- Amos Bronson Alcott, 1799 - 1888
An understanding heart is
everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks
back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to
those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary
raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and
for the soul of the child.
- Carl Gustav Jung, 1875 - 1961
A teacher affects eternity;
he can never tell where his influence stops.
- Henry Brooks Adams, 1838 - 1918
Back to School Week continues at Quotes of the Day. With admittedly vague recollections from those long-ago days when I was in school, I believe the focus of the process is the students. I do remember some of them, although I find that I'm hopelessly unable to match names and faces at our reunions. So here's to the Students, without whom teaching would doubtless be less trouble but completely pointless.
Today's Quotes:
Become a student of
change. It is the only thing that will remain constant.
- Anthony J. D'Angelo
Whoever ceases to be a student
has never been a student.
- George Iles
A professor can never better
distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for
the true discoverers are among them, as comets amongst the stars.
- Henry Brooks Adams, 1838 - 1918
It is important that students
bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they
are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
- Jacob Bronowski, 1908 - 1974
The pupil who is never required
to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
- John Stuart Mill, 1806 - 1873
It is not enough to offer
a smorgasbord of courses. We must insure that students are not just eating
at one end of the table.
- Angelo Bartlett Giamatti, 1938 - 1989
Back to School Week continues at Quotes of the Day. One of the things that folks say at this time of the year is that it's time to "hit the books". Or perhaps more immediately, start lugging the books around. I remember starting each year by carefully cutting and folding grocery bags to make protective covers. Less frugal families bought more visually stimulating book covers, I sort of liked being able to decorate mine myself. Anyway, today's quotes are on Books.
Today's Quotes:
You are the same today
that you are going to be in five years from now except for two things:
the people with whom you associate and the books you read.
- Charles Jones
A grain of real knowledge,
of genuine uncontrollable conviction, will outweigh a bushel of adroitness;
and to produce persuasion there is one golden principle of rhetoric not
put down in the books - to understand what you are talking about.
- John Seeley
Do not consider it proof
just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his
tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen.
- Maimonides
In the case of good books,
the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many
can get through to you.
- Mortimer J. Adler
A library book ... is not,
then, an article of mere consumption, but fairly of capital, and often
in the case of professional men, setting out in life, is their only capital.
- Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826
A stone is not carved by
a drop's falling twice, but by many times; so too does a human not become
wise by reading two, but by many books.
- Giordano Bruno, 1548 - 1600
Back to School Week continues
at Quotes of the Day. And what is the
purpose of going back to school? Although there are certainly those who
see the main benefit of it is getting the kids out of the house, we are
willing to devote years and resources to the schools in the hope of giving
the young an Education.
Today's Quotes:
One's work may be
finished someday, but one's education never.
- Alexandre Dumas, père, 1802 - 1870
An education isn't how much
you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able
to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
- Anatole France, 1844 - 1924
The educated differ from
the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
- Aristotle, 384 - 322 BC
The supreme end of education
is expert discernment in all things - the power to tell the good from the
bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine
to the bad and the counterfeit.
- Dr Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784
The test and the use of man's
education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.
- Jacques Martin Barzun
Our fundamental task as human
beings is to seek out connections - to exercise our imaginations. It follows
then, that the basic task of education is the care and feeding of the imagination.
- Katherine Paterson
Education is not the filling
of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
- William Butler Yeats, 1865 - 1939
Today's Quotes:
A high-school teacher, after
all, is a person deputized by the rest of us to explain to the young what
sort of world they are living in, and to defend, if possible, the part
their elders are playing in it.
- Emile Capouya
Education is a method whereby
one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
- Laurence J. Peter, 1919 - 1990
Education is an admirable
thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is
worth knowing can be taught.
- Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900
I began my education at a
very early age - in fact, right after I left college.
- Winston Churchill, 1874 - 1965
All quotes provided by the Quotemaster at Quotes of the Day. Quotes of the Day is sent daily, at no cost, to subscribers who understand that the wisdom of the past centuries can contribute to our understanding of today.