Philosophy of Education - Quotations (2024)

"The real nature of education is at variance with the account given of it by certain of its professors." ~Socrates, from Plato's The Republic

"The great world, the background, in all of us, is the world of our beliefs. That is the world of the permanencies and the immensities." ~ William James

"As we believe, so we are. All actions that we take in life, except for instinctive acts, are based on certain conscious and unconscious beliefs and presuppositions. Consequently, it is important that we understand the relationship between our actions and our beliefs." ~Bhagaved Gita

"All learning is in the learner, not in the teacher." ~Plato, Phaedo

"It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits." ~Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, #1

"The excellence of a thing is relative to its proper function." ~Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, #2

"All human perception consists of categorized rather than isolated perceptions." ~Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society

"The first thing an intellect does with an object is to class it with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. 'I am no such thing,' it would say; 'I am myself, myself alone.'" ~William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

"Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites." ~John Dewey, Experience and Education

"The solution, as always, is a union of the half truths drawn from the extremes." ~Mortimer J. Adler, Reforming Education—The Opening of the American Mind

"The obvious is always least understood." ~Prince Metternich

"Judgment is the faculty of subsuming under rules; that is, of distinguishing whether something does or does not stand under a given rule . . . judgment is a peculiar talent which can be practiced only, and cannot be taught . . . although admirable in understanding [an individual] may be wanting in natural power of judgment. He may comprehend the universal in abstracto, and yet not be able to distinguish whether a case in concreto comes under it." ~Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

"If education is to develop human nature so that it may attain the object of its being, it must involve the exercise of judgment." ~Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education, #14

"Understanding is the knowledge of the general. Judgment is the application of the general to the particular. Reason is the power of understanding the connection between the general and the particular." ~Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education, #68

"Discerning which action best instantiates a given principle requires judgment about the particularities of the situation." ~Lawrence Blum, Moral Perception and Particularity

"It is an easy matter to know the effects of honey, wine, hellebore, cautery, and cutting. But to know how, for whom, and when we should apply these as remedies is no less an undertaking than being a physician." ~Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book V, 1137a

"Intelligence divorced from judgment produces nothing but foolishness." ~Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education, #68

"And so he prefers to keep his conviction in the fluid state, check them instance by instance, and make them the implicit rule of his own everyday behavior, in doing or not doing, in choosing or rejecting, in speaking or in remaining silent." ~Italo Calvino, Mr. Palomar

"What a man sees depends on what he looks at and what his previous experience has taught him to see." ~Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

"It is the habit of mankind to mistake familiarity for accurate knowledge." ~John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at St. Andrews

"There may be no such entity as Truth with a capital "T," but there are such entities as trees and atoms. True assertions are those that mirror such entities properly." ~Richard Rorty, Hermeneutics, General Studies, and Teaching

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." ~David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I

"To say that there really are objective values out there, that there is a moral reality to be corresponded with, seems as pointless as saying that God is on our side." ~Richard Rorty, Hermeneutics, General Studies, and Teaching

"It is the meaning of our experiences, and not the ontological structure of the objects, which constitutes reality." ~Alfred Schutz, On Phenomenology and Social Relations

"What we say about reality depends on the perspective into which we throw it. The that of it is its own; but the what depends on the which; and the which depends on us. Both the sensational and the relational parts of reality are dumb: they say absolutely nothing about themselves. We it is who have to speak for them." ~William James, Pragmatism, Lecture 7

"Reality continues to ruin my life." ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes—Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat

"Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one" ~William James, The Meaning of Truth

"Truth may indeed be in the eye of the beholder, as is beauty, but the eye profits both from experience and from education. Experience requires the services of scholarship, knowledge, and reflection to define, refine, and redefine the eye's evolving judgment of what is true, and what is beautiful." ~Frank Pajares, Because There Is More Light There

"It is difficult to connect general principles with such thoroughly concrete things as little children." ~John Dewey, The School and Society

"This is why we have nothing to teach: we can exert no influence on what most resembles our own experience; in what bears our own imprint we are unable to recognize ourselves." ~Italo Calvino, Mr. Palomar

"Those child psychology books we bought were such a waste of money." ~Calvin's Mom, Calvin and Hobbes— Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons

"The origin of action . . . is choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to an end. This is why choice cannot exist either without thought and intellect or without a moral state; for good action and its opposite cannot exist without a combination of intellect and character." ~Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, #4

"Teaching is an instinctual art, mindful of potential, craving of realizations, a pausing, seamless process, where one rehearses constantly while acting, sits as a spectator at a play one directs, engages every part in order to keep the choices open and the shape alive for the student, so that the student may enter in and begin to do what the teacher has done: make choices." ~A. Bartlett Giamatti, "To Make Oneself Eternal, from A Free and Ordered Space

"Good teaching comes from good people." ~Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

"We must become just by doing just acts." ~Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, #4

"It is by doing good that we become good." ~Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile

"Man must develop his tendency towards the good." ~Immanuel Kant, "Thoughts on Education," #12

"In the world of knowledge, the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with effort." ~Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

"From now on, I'm not doing anything I don't want to do. The world owes me happiness, fulfillment, and success. I'm just here to cash in." ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes—Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat

"It is no easy task to be good." ~Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, #9

"There's an inverse relationship between how good something is for you, and how much fun it is." ~Calvin, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes

"Your task is to build up a character in your pupils; and a character, as I have so often said, consists in an organized set of habits of reaction." ~William James, Talks to Teachers

"Cultivating character is a legitimate—indeed, an inevitable—function of education." ~Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education

"Nothing spoils fun like finding out it builds character." ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes—Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons

"Teachers are the agents through which knowledge and skills are communicated and rules of conduct enforced." ~John Dewey, Experience and Education

"Make but few laws but see them well observed when once made." ~John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

"Those children who have been most chastised seldom make the best men." ~John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

"Punishments inflicted with signs of anger are useless." ~Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education, #85

"Research findings are rare, but there is now available a large store of clinical and educational experience which allows us to make a reasonable guess that the young child needs not only gratification; he needs also to learn the limitations that the physical world puts upon his gratifications, and he has to learn that other human beings seek for gratifications, too, even his mother and father, i.e., they are not only means to his ends. This means control, delay, limits, renunciation, frustration-tolerance and discipline. Only to the self-disciplined and responsible person can we say, 'Do as you will, and it will probably be all right.'" ~Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

"A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day." ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes—The Days Are Just Packed

"To impose from above is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity; to learning from texts and teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of isolated skills and techniques by drill is opposed acquisition of them as means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal; to preparation for a more or less remote future is opposed making the most of the opportunities of present life; to static aims and materials is opposed acquaintance with a changing world." ~John Dewey, Experience and Education

"Ultimately the person, even the child, must choose for himself." ~Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

"Adolescents need freedom to choose, but not so much freedom that they cannot, in fact, make a choice." ~Erik Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle

"You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action." ~William James, Talks to Teachers

Calvin: Let's try this path over here.
Hobbes: I don't see a path.
Calvin: We'll make a path!
~The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

"The will of children . . . must not be broken, but merely bent in such a way that it may yield to natural obstacles." ~Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

"We ought to regard the breaking of a child's spirit as a sin against humanity." ~Erik Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle

"Maxima debetur pueris reverentia."

"Curiosity in children is but an appetite after knowledge." ~John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

"The natural temper of children disposes their minds to wander." ~John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

"Each man's mind has some peculiarity, as well as his face, that distinguishes him from all others; and there are possibly scarce two children who can be conducted by exactly the same method." ~John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

"If students vary in their responsiveness to different methods, which they do, and if the skills and forms of awareness that we wish to teach students are as varied as the situations and contexts of life itself, which they are, then it follows that no one teaching method can meet all the demands of learning . . . concern for method should always be a concern for methods." ~Marshall Gregory, "Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Teacherly Ethos"

"Memory should only be occupied with such things as are important to be retained, and which will be of service to us in real life." ~Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

"The role of the educator is one of a tranquil possesion of certitude in regard to the teaching not only of contents but also of 'correct thinking.'" ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"One of the necessary requirements for correct thinking is a capacity for not being overly convinced of one's own certitudes." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"I've got to start listening to those quiet, nagging doubts." ~Calvin, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

"The proper business of a University is . . . not to tell us . . . what we ought to believe, and make us accept the belief as a duty; but to give us information and training, and help us to form our own beliefs in a manner worthy of intelligent beings." ~John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at St. Andrews

Calvin: I think we have got enough information now, don't you?
Hobbes: All we have is one "fact" that you made up.
Calvin: That's plenty. By the time we add an introduction, a few illustrations and a
conclusion, it'll look like a graduate thesis.
Calvin: Besides, I've got a secret weapon that will guarantee me a good grade.
No teacher can resist this.
Hobbes: What is it?
Calvin: A clear plastic binder! Pretty professional looking, eh?
Hobbes: I don't want co-author credit on this, ok?
~The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes

"A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth." ~Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education

"He isn't a genius, he is a professor—a being whose duty is to know everything, and have his own opinion about everything, connected with his field." ~William James, letter to Carl Stumpf, Familiar Letters of William James

"Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use." ~William James, Pragmatism

"Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning." ~Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education

"Without making categorical judgments or bruising anyone's pedagogical ego, surely it is legitimate to ask whether the desire to cover as much academic ground as possible in every course has not led many teachers into teaching so much material that they teach it badly." ~Marshall Gregory, Liberal Education, Human Development, and Social Vision

"The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumined with any spark of vitality." ~Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education

"It is better to know but little, and that little thoroughly, than to know a great deal and that superficially; for one becomes aware of the shallowness of superficial knowledge later on." ~Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

"Breadth and depth, like freedom and discipline, are not mutually exclusive, though one will incline more toward one at one time, and toward the other at another." ~Kenneth Eble, The Craft of Teaching

"You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use. Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves." ~William James, Talks to Teachers

"Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract." ~William James, Talks to Teachers

"But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pædagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task." ~William James, Talks to Teachers

"Professors gravitate to the bright, well-prepared students. They are easier to teach, and they appear to profit most from instruction, which may simply mean they are most like the professors. But in the increasing pluralism and decreasing professionalism of colleges and universities in the next decades, the master teacher is likely to be the one who can provide context for many kinds of students." ~Kenneth Eble, The Craft of Teaching

"Be patient and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations. It may, in the long examination which life sets us, come out in the end in better shape than the glib and ready reproducer, its passions being deeper, its purposes more worthy, its combining power less commonplace, and its total mental output consequently more important." ~William James, Talks to Teachers

"I understand my tests are popular reading in the teachers' lounge." ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes—There's Treasure Everywhere

"[A teacher] should add sweetness in all his instructions; and by a certain tenderness in his whole carriage, make the child sensible that he loves him, and designs nothing but his good." ~John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

"Humanity reaches as far as love reaches; it has no frontiers except those we give it." ~Italo Calvino, The Watcher

"I cannot but think that to apperceive your pupil as a little sensitive, impulsive, associative, and reactive organism, partly fated and partly free, will lead to a better intelligence of all his ways. Understand him, then, as such a subtle little piece of machinery. And if, in addition, you can also see him sub specie boni, and love him as well, you will be in the best possible position for becoming perfect teachers." ~William James, Talks to Teachers

"There is nothing much to be said about general studies or the teaching of such studies save a warning against taking either as more than ways of helping the young to join the human race. What helps them to do this is—to employ a factitious antithesis—love rather than knowledge." ~Richard Rorty, Hermeneutics, General Studies, and Teaching

"Love is an act of courage." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"In order to develop intellectually, emotionally, socially, and morally a child requires participation in progressively more complex reciprocal activity, on a regular basis over an extended period in the child's life, with one or more persons with whom the child develops a strong, mutual, irrational emotional attachment and who is committed to the child's well-being and development, preferably for life." ~Urie Bronfenbrenner, "What Do Families Do?"

"I'd rather do nothing with you than something with anybody else." ~Beaver to Wally, Leave it to Beaver

"There is nothing in which an untrained mind shows itself more hopelessly incapable than in drawing the proper general conclusions from its own experience." ~John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at Saint Andrews

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it — and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again — and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore." ~Mark Twain

"Some experiences are mis-educative. Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience." ~John Dewey, Experience and Education

"There are a number of school practices that, for the less talented or ill-prepared, tend to convert instructional experiences into education in inefficacy. ~Albert Bandura, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control

"The really bright student, the eager questioner, the probing searcher, especially if he is brighter than his teacher, is too often seen as a 'wise guy,' a threat to discipline, a challenger of his teacher's authority." ~Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

Calvin: Boy, did I get in trouble at school today. Wow.
Hobbes: What happened?
Calvin: I don't even want to talk about it.
Hobbes: Did it have anything to do with all those sirens about noon?
Calvin: I SAID I don't want to talk about it.
~ The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

"What is tragic and real and unique to the child cannot be laughed at even though it has happened and will happen to millions of others." ~Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

"I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul." ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes—There's Treasure Everywhere

"Laissez-faire is not the opposite of dogma. To be reasonable is a difficult achievement." ~Israel Scheffler, Reason and Teaching

"Being clear about what teaching is matters vitally because how teachers understand teaching very much affects what they actually do in the classroom." ~Paul H. Hirst, "What is Teaching?"

"When a teacher asks a question in class and a student responds, she receives not just the "response" but the student. What he says matters, whether it is right or wrong, and she probes gently for clarification, interpretation, contribution. She is not seeking the answer but the involvement of the cared-for. For the brief interval of dialogue that grows around the question, the cared-for indeed "fills the firmament." The student is infinitely more important than the subject matter." ~Nel Noddings, Caring, a Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education

Miss Wormwood: Calvin where was the Byzantine empire?
Calvin: I'll take "outer planets" for $100.
~ The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

"Everything we do as teachers has moral overtones." ~Nel Noddings, Caring, a Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education

"What I must do is to be totally and nonselectively present to the student—to each student—as he addresses me. The time interval may be brief but the encounter is total." ~Nel Noddings, Caring, a Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education

"Miss Wormwood, could we arrange our seats in a little circle and have a little discussion? Specifically, I'd like to debate whether cannibalism ought to be grounds for leniency in murders since it is less wasteful." ~ Calvin, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

"The student is infinitely more important than the subject-matter." ~Nel Noddings, Caring, a Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education

Miss Wormwood: Ok, you've all read the chapter, so who can tell me what's important
about the Battle of Lexington?
Miss Wormwood: Anyone?
Miss Wormwood: Calvin, how about you?
Calvin: Hard to say ma'am. I think my cerebellum just fused.
~ The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

"College professors who view nurturing their students' often-fragile egos as beyond their purview or who believe that their instructional responsibility consists merely of dispensing information would do well to rethink their teaching mission and reflect on the nature of their roles as educators of youth." ~Frank Pajares, Schooling in America: Myths, Mixed Messages, and Good Intentions

"Caring for students should be inextricably conjoined with truth in the teaching conversation, [but] a reciprocal conversation engenders its own sense of responsibility. Good manners and the everyday psychological savvy that all teachers should possess dictate that, when instructing children, honest criticism should be couched in terms that students are capable of understanding and be delivered in ways that have the intended effect. Teachers do well to take seriously their share of responsibility over their pupils' emerging self-beliefs. Honesty escorted by unkindness is too often likely to be met with resistance and may have precisely the opposite effect that a teacher might wish. Wielding truth as one would wield a blunt object constitutes both an insincere and unjustifiable speech act. Gentleness, kindness, and tact are fine chaperones of truth and sincerity. Also, truth must sometimes be withheld, if the speaker should judge that the listener is not, in some way, genuinely ready or able to engage in the speech act. There is nothing in these commonsense safeguards, of course, to license subterfuge, duplicitous honesty, or, most especially, the distortion of truth in the teaching conversation" ~Frank Pajares, "Teachers' and Students' Beliefs about Truth and Caring in the Teaching Conversation"

"The kind of teacherly befriending I am talking about entails creating an atmosphere of classroom trust in which the teacher's willingness to call a bad job a bad job is seen by the students as helpful and productive rather than as mean and destructive." ~Marshall Gregory, "Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Teacherly Ethos"

"Teachers may not like being assessed by students in deeply personal ways—as likable or worthy of respect as human beings—but teachers don't have the option of not being assessed this way, and they don't have to like it in order to concede that such evaluations both always occur and always play a crucial role in student learning." ~Marshall Gregory, "Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Teacherly Ethos"

"We have of late been hearing much of the philosophy of tenderness in education; 'interest' must be assiduously awakened in everything, difficulties must be smoothed away. Soft pedagogics have taken the place of the old steep and rocky path to learning. But from this lukewarm air the bracing oxygen of effort is left out. It is nonsense to suppose that every step in education can be interesting. The fighting impulse must often be appealed to. A victory scored under such conditions becomes a turning point and crisis of character." ~William James, Talks to Teachers

"Why should I have to work for everything? It's like saying I don't deserve it." ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes—There's Treasure Everywhere

"Cultural background surely plays a part in shaping identity; but it does not determine identity." Maxine Greene, The Passions of Pluralism

"The limits of my language mark the limits of my world." ~Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

"Without knowing the language of a people, we never really know their thoughts, their feelings, and their type of character." ~John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at St. Andrews

"Truth is not everywhere the same, because language is not everywhere the same, and human existence is essentially linguistic and essentially historical." ~Richard Rorty, Hermeneutics, General Studies, and Teaching

"If you want to know what you are thinking, put your thoughts into words." ~John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at St. Andrews

"How can I know what I think unless I hear what I say." ~adapted from Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought (and E. M. Forster]

"How can I know what I think unless I see what I write." ~Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

"I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog. The Dynamics of Inter-Being and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes. Academia, here I come." ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes—Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat

"The only 'good learning' is that which is in advance of development." ~Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society

"Psychology teaches us at every step that though two types of activity can have the same external manifestation, whether in origin or essence, their nature may differ most profoundly." ~Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society

Calvin: I'm a simple man, Hobbes.
Hobbes: You? Yesterday you wanted a nuclear powered car that could turn into a jet
with laser-guided heat-seeking missiles!
Calvin: I'm a simple man with complex tastes.
~Calvin and Hobbes—The Days are Just Packed

"Child development is a complex dialectical process characterized by periodicity, unevenness in the development of different functions, metamorphosis or qualitative transformation of one form into another, intertwining of external and internal factors, and adaptive processes which overcome impediments that the child encounters." ~Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society

"What's the point of wearing your favorite rocketship underpants if nobody ever asks to see 'em?" ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes—It's a Magical World

"The mind is not a complex network of general capabilities such as observation, attention, memory, judgment, and so forth, but a set of specific capabilities, each of which is, to some extent, independent of the others and is developed independently. Learning is more than the acquisition of the ability to think; it is the acquisition of many specialized abilities for thinking about a variety of things." ~Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society

"What children can do with the assistance of others might be in some sense even more indicative of their mental development than what they can do alone." ~Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society

"If students are not able to transform their lived experience into knowledge and to use the already acquired knowledge as a process to unveil new knowledge, they will never be able to participate rigorously in a dialogue as a process of learning and knowing." ~Donald Macedo, Introduction to Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"No reality transforms itself." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"There are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"There is, in fact, no teaching without learning." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"Children, in their simple directness, often bring us adults back to basics. Any developmental theory that rules out, on purely theoretical grounds, even the possibility that we adults may occasionally have something to learn, morally, from a child is, for that reason, defective; it is morally offensive." ~Gareth Matthews, The Philosophy of Childhood

"Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"I perplex others, not because I am clear, but because I am utterly perplexed myself." ~Socrates, in Plato's Meno

"Dialogue cannot exist without humility." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"More than other kinds of relationships, teaching offers a mutuality of tending, rewarding, and relating that moves in two directions at once: from the teacher to the student and back again. Thus, in addition to helping people get to places in the world they want to go to and helping them to do the things they want to do, teaching satisfies our deep craving for meaningful forms of social connection that are neither cynically exploitative nor personally intimate, but that nevertheless balance the personal with the professional and enrich the professional with the personal. ~Marshall Gregory, "Correspondence School and Waterford Crystal"

"Learn from the child how to perfect yourself as an educator." ~Maecy Spirito, adapted from Montessori, The Montessori Method

"The quality of our lives improves immensely when there is at least one other person who is willing to listen to our troubles." ~Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow

"Faith in people is an a priori requirement for dialogue; the "dialogical man" believes in others even before he meets them." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"[A teacher] begins by attributing the best possible motive to [the student]." ~Nel Noddings, Caring, a Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education

"Only through communication can human life hold meaning." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Cultivating our best talk—vigorous criticism and open discourse—remains our surest stay against falling into, at best, self-serving blindness, or, at worst, self-defeating hypocrisy." ~Marshall Gregory, "Plato's Protagoras: Professional Models, Ethical Concerns"

"Human beings are because they are in a situation." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Individuals who are submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, must emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Human activity consists of action and reflection: it is praxis; it is transformation of the world. And as praxis, it requires theory to illuminate it. Human activity is theory and practice; it is reflection and action. It cannot be reduced to either verbalism or activism." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise theory becomes simply "blah, blah, blah," and practice, pure activism." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what they do does." ~Michel Foucault, quoted in Dreyfus & Rabinow's Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, p. 186.

"Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest. We don't lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid." ~William James, Pragmatism, Lecture 2

"Keep before you a busy classroom of nine-year-olds, say, with a hard-working teacher, and ask what kind of theoretical knowledge would help them." ~Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education.

"As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway." ~Calvin, The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes

"The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social structure. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authoritarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate of oppression. As these authoritarian relations between parents and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly internalize the paternal authority." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"I'm a 21st-century kid trapped in a 19th-century family." ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes—There's Treasure Everywhere

"The atmosphere of the home is prolonged in the school, where the students soon discover that (as in the home) in order to achieve some satisfaction they must adapt to the precepts which have been set from above. One of these precepts is not to think." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"I go to school, but I never learn what I want to know." ~Calvin, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

"Professional women and men of any specialty, university graduates or not, are individuals who been 'determined from above' by a culture of domination which has constituted them as dual beings. (If they had come from the lower classes this miseducation would be the same, if not worse.)" ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Understanding something in one way does not preclude understanding it in other ways." ~Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education.

"Ideally, school is supposed to provide a setting where our performance has fewer esteem-threatening consequences than in the 'real world,' presumably in the interest of encouraging the learner to 'try things out.'" ~Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education.

"Beliefs and assumptions about teaching, whether in a school or in any other context, are a direct reflection of the beliefs and assumptions the teacher holds about the learner." ~Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education.

"Knowledge helps only when it descends into habits." ~Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education.

"Scientia dependit in mores."

"Everything is habit with men, everything even in their social and political relations. Habit is the great motive-power." ~Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

"Los dictadores pueden reformar las leyes, pero no las costumbres." ~Jacinto Benavente y Martínez

"Educational practices should be gauged not only by the skills and knowledge they impart for present use but also by what they do to children's beliefs about their capabilities, which affects how they approach the future. Students who develop a strong sense of self-efficacy are well equipped to educate themselves when they have to rely on their own initiative." ~Albert Bandura, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control

"Parents and teachers who provide children with challenging tasks and meaningful activities that can be mastered, and who chaperone these efforts with support and encouragement, help ensure the development of a robust sense of self-confidence and of self-worth. Beliefs of personal competence and of self-worth ultimately become habits of thinking that are developed like any habit of conduct, and teachers are influential in helping students to develop the 'self-belief habits' that will serve them throughout their lives." ~Frank Pajares, Self-Beliefs and School Success

"If Mom and Dad cared about me at all, they'd buy me some infra-red nighttime vision goggles." ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes

"The influence of people's self-beliefs on their achievement does not end with their schooling. Consequently, the aim of education must transcend the development of academic competence. Schools have the added responsibility of preparing self-assured and fully-functioning individuals capable of pursuing their hopes and their ambitions." ~Frank Pajares, Self-Beliefs and School Success

"It seems clear that many of the difficulties that people experience throughout their lives are closely connected with the beliefs they hold about themselves and their place in the world in which they live. Students' academic failures in basic subjects, as well as the misdirected motivation and lack of commitment often characteristic of the underachiever, the dropout, the student labeled "at risk," and the socially disabled, are in good measure the consequence of, or certainly exacerbated by, the beliefs that students develop about themselves and about their ability to exercise a measure of control over their environments." ~Frank Pajares, Schooling in America: Myths, Mixed Messages, and Good Intentions

"Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help." ~Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes—It's a Magical World

"We must seek to cultivate the frankness in the child. This is an unassuming confidence in himself, the possession of which places him in a position to exhibit his talents in a becoming manner. This self-confidence is to be distinguished from insolence, which is really indifference to the judgment of others." ~ Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

"Let us not confuse ourselves by failing to recognize that there are two kinds of self-confidence—one a trait of personality and another that comes from knowledge of a subject. It is no particluar credit to the educator to help build the first without building the second. The objective of education is not the production of self-confident fools." ~Albert Bandura, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control

"Children cannot be fooled by empty praise and condescending encouragement. They may have to accept artificial bolstering of their self-esteem in lieu of something better, but their accruing ego identity gains real strength only from wholehearted and consistent recognition of real accomplishment, that is, achievement that has meaning in their culture . . . a strong ego, secured in its identity by a strong society, does not need, and in fact is immune to any attempt at artificial inflation" ~Erik Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle

"Artificial self-esteem is naked against adversity; unwarranted confidence is co*cky conceit." ~Frank Pajares, Schooling in America: Myths, Mixed Messages, and Good Intentions

"When what is communicated to a child from an early age is that nothing matters quite as much as how he or she feels or how confident he or she should be, one can rest assured that the world will sooner or later teach that child a lesson in humility that may not easily be learned. An obsession with one's sense of self is responsible for an alarming increase in depression and other mental difficulties." ~Frank Pajares, Self-Beliefs and School Success

"For your information, I'm staying like this, and everyone else can just get used to it! If people don't like me the way I am, well TOUGH BEANS! It's a free country! I don't need anyone's permission to be the way I want! This is how I am. Take it or leave it!" ~Calvin, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

"There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments. There are only consequences." ~ Robert Ingersoll

"Rewards and punishment make for the lowest form of education." ~ Chuang Tzu

"Prizes and punishments are ever-ready and efficient aids to the teacher who must force into a given attitude of mind and body those who are condemned to be his students." ~ Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method

Susie: It's wrong to get rewards you haven't earned.
Calvin: I've never heard of anyone who couldn't live with that.
~The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

"The special power of teachers to infect others with the virus of their own passion for learning often gives teachers more power than they either realize or want." ~Marshall Gregory, "Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Teacherly Ethos"

"The greatest learning experiences, for me, were almost always the greatest personal experiences. It is hard to know which came first: interest in what was said or interest in the sayer." ~Christina Nehring, "The Higher Yearning"

"Teachers—and this holds especially of the stronger and better teachers—tend to rely upon their personal strong points to hold the child to his work, and thereby to substitute their personal influence for that of subject matter as a motive for study. The teacher finds by experience that his own personality is often effective where the power of the subject to command attention is almost nil; then he utilizes the former more and more, until the pupil's relation to the teacher almost takes the place of his relation to the subject. In this way, the teacher's personality may become, for the pupil, a source of personal dependence and weakness, an influence that renders the pupil indifferent to the value of the subject for its own sake." ~John Dewey, How We Think

"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." ~A. Bronson Alcott, "The Teacher," from The Dial (July 1840).

"Unfortunately, a spectacular personality which creates interest in itself is sometimes confused with the personality which inspires interest, not alone or chiefly in itself, but rather in the creative incorporation of knowledge. An ability to inspire students with a desire to listen to you and to learn from you is part of the art of teaching. It is not the whole art." ~Charles Cragg, "Teachers Also Must Learn" from Teaching and the Case Method

"Of course we need standards and resources to make our schools work well in solving the myriad tasks they face. But resources and standards alone will not work. We need a surer sense of what to teach to whom and how to go about teaching it in such a way that it will make those taught more effective, less alienated, and better human beings." ~Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education.

"If we want to know how or why a curriculum either works or doesn't, we have to consider how we teach it, for none of its contents is transparently or automatically predictable." ~Marshall Gregory, "Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Teacherly Ethos"

"You can present the material, but you can't make me care." ~Calvin to Mrs. Wormwood, Calvin and Hobbes

"Institutional, curricular, and pedagogical transformation and a focus on students' intellectual development are not incompatible with concern for students' personal, social, and psychological needs and well-being." ~Frank Pajares, Schooling in America: Myths, Mixed Messages, and Good Intentions

"Pedagogy is the primary force, the engine, that accomplishes the 'leading out' (from Latin educare) that lies as the etymological source of educate and that also describes education's most basic aim." ~Marshall Gregory, "Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Teacherly Ethos"

"The very concept of practice recognizes the inevitability of interim failure. If we did a thing right the first time we would not need to practice it. Real learning is always risky because the possibility of failure is always real." ~Marshall Gregory, "Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Teacherly Ethos"

"Every great cause is born from repeated failures and from imperfect achievements."~Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method

"Nothing I do is my fault." ~Calvin, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes

"Of the thousands of pieces of advice, inspiration and encouragment I've received over the years, the most powerful one—the one that has played a central role in my life, both as a child and as an adult—boils down to a single word: practice." ~Itzhak Perlman, The Right Words at the Right Time

"There is something to be said for keeping at a thing, isn't there?" ~Frank Sinatra, The Right Words at the Right Time, Al Pacino entry

"The child will always attend more to what a teacher does than to what the same teacher says." ~William James, Talks to Teachers

"Trust must be reciprocal—to be sincere, speakers must trust their listeners." ~Frank Pajares, "The Psychologizing of Teacher Education"

"To teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"Teachers are responsible for making judgments about what is worth learning under circ*mstances in which it is not self-evident what becoming informed requires." ~Frank Pajares, "Teachers' and Students' Beliefs about Truth and Caring in the Teaching Conversation"

"I teach because I search." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"In the process of the ongoing education of teachers, the essential moment is that of critical reflection on one's practice." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"May you never be more active than when you are doing nothing." ~Cato

"If there is any characteristic that is distinctively human, it is the capability for reflective self-consciousness." ~Albert Bandura, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control

"The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness, and in human responsibility." ~Václav Havel, Address delivered before the United States Congress, February 1990.

"Sometimes a simple, almost insignificant gesture on the part of a teacher can have a profound formative effect on the life of a student.

I will always remember one such gesture in my life when I was an adolescent. A gesture that marks me profoundly but whose significance on my life was almost certainly not noticed or known by my teacher. At that time I experienced myself as an insecure adolescent, not at home with a body perceived as more bone than beauty, feeling myself to be less capable than the other students, insecure about my own creative possibilities, easily riled, and not very much at peace with the world. The slightest gesture by any of the better-off-students in the class was capable of highlighting my insecurity and my fragility.

On this occasion our teacher had brought our homework to school after correcting it and was callng us one by one to comment on it. When my turn came, I noticed he was looking over my text with great attention, nodding his head in an attitude of respect and consideration. His respectful and appreciative attitude had a much greater effect on me than the high grade that he gave me for my work. The gesture of the teacher affirmed in me a self-confidence that obviously still had much room to grow. But it inspired in me a belief that I too had value and could work and produce results - results that clearly had their limits but that were a demonstration of my capacity, which up until that moment I would have been inclined to hide or not fully believe in." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"Extraordinariness is most likely to emerge if aspiring individuals are exposed to extraordinary models; ponder the lessons embodied in those models; and have the opportunity to enact critical practices in a relatively protected setting." ~Howard Gardner, Extraordinary Minds

"Children have more need of models than of critics." ~Joseph Joubert, Pensees

Hobbes: How come we play war and not peace?
Calvin: Too few role models.
~The Essential Calvin and Hobbes

"No matter how much someone may irritate me, I have no right to puff myself up with my own self-importance so as to declare that person to be absolutely incompetent, assuming a posture of disdain from my own position of false superiority." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"It's impossible to talk of respect for students for the dignity that is in the process of coming to be, for the identities that are in the process of construction, without taking into consideration the conditions in which they are living and the importance of the knowledge derived from life experience, which they bring with them to school. I can in no way underestimate such knowledge. Or what is worse, ridicule it." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"There are few things sadder to a teacher or parent than being faced with capable children who, as a result of previous demoralizing experiences, or even self-imposed mind-sets, have come to believe that they cannot learn, when all objective indicators show that they can. Often, much time and patience are required to break the mental habits of perceived incompetence that have come to imprison young minds." ~Frank Pajares, Schooling in America: Myths, Mixed Messages, and Good Intentions

"The fundamental fact about our experience is that it is a process of change." ~William James, The Meaning of Truth, Chapter 2

"I like to be human because in my unfinishedness I know that I am conditioned. Yet conscious of such conditioning, I know that I can go beyond it, which is the essential difference between conditioned and determined existence." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"The world is not finished." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"Educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with—which, unfortunately, is rarely the case—tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than do men who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end." ~J. D. Salinger, Mr. Antolini's advice to Haulden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye

"Teachers who do not take their own education seriously, who do not study, who make little effort to keep abreast of events have no moral authority to coordinate the activities of the classroom." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"The academy has always sheltered lazy professors, who die from the neck up at tenure." ~Jackson Lears, The Radicalism of Tradition: Teaching the Liberal Arts in a Managerial Age

"Education students, teacher educators, and school practitioners bear responsibility for their habits of mind." ~Frank Pajares, "Teachers' and Students' Beliefs about Truth and Caring in the Teaching Conversation"

"The work of a teacher—exhausting, complex, idiosyncratic, never twice the same—is at its heart, an intellectual and ethical enterprise. Teaching is the vocation of vocations, a calling that shepherds a multitude of other callings. It is an activity that is intensely practical and yet transcendent, brutally matter-of-fact, and yet fundamentally a creative act. Teaching begins in challenge and is never far from mystery." ~William Ayers, To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher

"I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"Teaching is a daily exercise in vulnerability." ~Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

"Did it sometimes happen that Socrates spoke and no one listened?" ~James Carse, "A Higher Ignorance," from Breakfast at the Victory

"Students don't separate method from ethos, and they are quite right not to do so. To students, we are what we do." ~Marshall Gregory, "Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Teacherly Ethos"

"One of my major preoccupations is the approximation between what I say and what I do, between what I seem to be and what I am actually becoming." ~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

"Teaching is a rhetorical transaction that depends for its success on teachers having the responsibility to say what they mean and to mean what they say." ~Frank Pajares, "The Psychologizing of Teacher Education"

"If you are a wise man you will observe your pupil carefully before saying a word to him." ~Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile

"Where do we keep all our chainsaws, Mom?" ~Calvin, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes

"Careful the things you say,
Children will listen.
Careful the spell you cast.
Sometimes the spell may last
Past what you can see."
~Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods

"We cannot store up generalizations and constructs for ultimate assembly into a network . . . when we give proper weight to local conditions, any generalization is a working hypothesis, not a conclusion." ~Lee Cronbach, "Beyond the Two Disciplines of Psychology"

"All generalizations are dangerous. Even this one." ~Alexandre Dumas