quotations about teaching
It's the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
Teaching is an art, not a science, principally because it involves human beings, their emotions and their values.
GILBERT HIGHET
The Art of Teaching
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Pleasures of Life
We love the precepts for the teacher's sake.
GEORGE FARQUHAR
The Constant Couple
What I've learned about teaching is to refer back to the root of that word, which is educo, which means "to pull from." Education does not mean jamming information into somebody's head. Rather, it's that ancient idea that all knowledge is within us; to teach is to help somebody pull it out of themselves.
ALAN ARKIN
Esquire, March 2007
If I were president? First thing I'd do is take care of the schoolteachers. I'm not saying we should start 'em out with six figures, but in some places they've got to be mother, father, brother, sister, and mentor. They're real important people. Let's give 'em a raise -- and attract the best people to the job.
CARMELLO ANTHONY
Esquire, January 2005
One thing that isn't a myth about teachers is that they love the actual act of teaching. However, sometimes teachers can be made to feel as if their wings are being clipped by ever-changing guidelines and standards that demand they rework, rewrite, and resubmit curricula and lesson plans for approval, when the materials and ideas they'd already developed were working well.
GINA BELLI
"8 Reasons Teaching Is More Difficult Than You Think (Not One Is About the Kids)", PayScale, October 23, 2016
You know what's adorable about inspirational teacher movies? The way they grade papers. When Robin Williams sits down in front of a stack of papers in Dead Poets Society, they're all neatly arranged and he's staring intently at one, pen poised, ready to help guide one of those good-looking boys down the road to self-discovery before jotting down a score in his leather-bound grade book. Look, maybe I'm just doing it wrong. But my grade book is a dog-eared old Squibbs--which I had to buy myself, since the school doesn't give those out anymore--that is so overflowing with student work it's about to attain consciousness and try to take over the world.
CAPTAIN AWESOME
"6 Ways in Which Teaching Is Nothing Like the Movies", We Are Teachers, December 4, 2015
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
The teacher does not have to be, although he has to know: he is the mind imagining, not the executant.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
The Essential Wyndham Lewis
Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism ... the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young.
HENRY S. CANBY
Alma Mater
First then, I lay down for a principle, that nobody at an University is to be taught the practice of any rule without the true and solid reason and demonstration of the same. Rules without demonstration must and ought to be taught to seamen, artisans, &c. as I have already said; and schools for such people are fit in seaports and trading towns; but it is far below the dignity of an University, which is designed for solid and true learning, to do this.
JOHN ARBUTHNOT
An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning
It is better to teach a few things perfectly than many things indifferently.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
The teacher is a sympathizing guide whose familiarity with the subjects to be learned enables him to direct the learner's efforts, to save him from the waste of time and strength, or needless or insuperable difficulties, and to keep him from mistaking truth for error. But no aid of school or teacher can change nature's modes in mind work, or take from the learner the lordly prerogative and need for knowing for himself.
JOHN MILTON GREGORY
The Seven Laws of Teaching
There was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can't do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.
RANDY PAUSCH
The Last Lecture
As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.
HAIM G. GINOTT
Young Children, vol. 51, 1964
No teaching is complete that does not issue in plain and intelligent expression of the truth taught; but it is the most miserable of mockeries when, in place of leading the child to perfect and put into its own simple speech its own simple conceptions of truth, we impose upon it the ready-made definitions of some learned master or teacher, dressed, for the most part, in words it never heard before.
JOHN MILTON GREGORY
The Seven Laws of Teaching
All I can say to teachers, both indigenous and non-indigenous, is this: Our children need to learn about one another and about the world, even when the world is a difficult place. We need creative, thoughtful and kind people who are willing to take risks to teach all our children. Please don't be afraid to engage them. They need you.
DANIELLE S. MCLAUGHLIN
"What Is Appropriate And What Is Cultural Appropriation?", Huffington Post Canada, May 23, 2017
In the rush to make teaching a science we mustn't forget the artistry and craft of the job.
SIMON SMITH
"Evidence is important, but great teaching is still an art", TES, May 12, 2017
Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts