Quotes about Education
We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.
Anyone who would attempt the task of felling a virgin forest with a penknife would probably feel the same paralysis of despair that the reformer feels when confronted with existing school systems.
Science is a co-operative enterprise, spanning the generations. It`s the passing of a torch from teacher to student to teacher. A community of minds reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (movie)
When students cheat on exams it`s because our school system values grades more than students value learning.
The best educators are the ones that inspire their students. That inspiration comes from a passion that teachers have for the subject they`re teaching.
It`s the inspired student that continues to learn on their own. That`s what separates the real achievers in the world from those who pedal along, finishing assignments.
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all. It is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry to put down dissent and originality.
We`re all born with curiosity, but at some point, school usually manages to knock that out of us. I feel that my main responsibility as a teacher isn`t to convey facts, but to rekindle that lost enthusiasm for asking questions.
From the moment we are born we are presented with absolute facts rather than situated ones. We aren`t taught that distinctions such as young and old or healthy and unhealthy are social constructions and that their meaning depends on context. We are conditioned to learn about and see the world as a set of facts, such as 1 + 1 = 2. The world is far more subtle than such facts allow, and we should have learned that 1 + 1=2 only if we are using the base 10 number system, but that it equals 10 if the number system is base 2, and that 1 + 1 = 1 if we are adding one wad of chewing gum to one wad of chewing gum.
You cannot overestimate the stupidity of your audience. Insist on the obvious and glide nimbly over the esssential.