Education Quotes and Sayings about Teaching, Learning, Teachers and Students

Updated June 27, 2012 It's hardly a secret, but there are thousands of web pages that have quotations or sayings about education. Quotes are everywhere. It's no stretch to say that almost everyone appreciates good quotes and sayings, especially ones that convey an important idea. Often, a short quote or saying reflects wisdom, and can have a more profound impact than ten pages of tortured prose, or even some pictures. Below are some of the best I've seen, including the famous "I Taught Them All" and "The Poor Scholar's Soliloquy," both of which are more than 50 years old. The bad teacher's words fall on his pupils like harsh rain; the good teacher's, as gently as dew. Talmud: Ta'anith 7b Education is like a double-edged sword. It may be turned to dangerous uses if it is not properly handled. Wu Ting-Fang What people need and what they want may be very different.... Teachers are those who educate the people to appreciate the things they need. Elbert Hubbard Truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but, in the end, there it is. Sir Winston Churchill Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy. Robert Heinlein Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. James 3:1 In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less. Lee Iacocca I am a teacher! What I do and say are being absorbed by young minds who will echo these images across the ages. My lessons will be immortal, affecting people yet unborn, people I will never see or know. The future of the world is in my classroom today, a future with the potential for good or bad. The pliable minds of tomorrow's leaders will be molded either artistically or grotesquely by what I do. Several future presidents are learning from me today; so are the great writers of the next decades, and so are all the so-called ordinary people who will make the decisions in a democracy. I must never forget these same young people could be the thieves or murderers of the future. Only a teacher? Thank God I have a calling to the greatest profession of all! I must be vigilant every day lest I lose one fragile opportunity to improve tomorrow. Ivan Welton Fitzwater No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education, no man's education is complete. G. K. Chesterton If you say you understand something, then you can explain what you understand to others. Anything short of that is deception, not understanding. Education, above all, should not be about fostering deception. In the same vein, anything not understood in more than one way is not understood at all. R. J. Kizlik

Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don't just stand there, make it happen. Lee Iacocca Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers cost more. Bob Talbert Upon falls They Wisdom is But to this from gifted the lie enough there weave to sky age, a in meteoric unquestioned, leech us daily exists it Vincent its shower of no into dark of hour facts; uncombined. our ill spun, loom fabric. Millay

Edna St. "Huntsman, What Quarry?" 1939

Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Susan B. Anthony Three things give the student the possibility of surpassing his teacher: ask a lot of questions, remember the answers, teach. Jan Amos Comnius Everything depends upon the quality of experience . . . just as no man lives or dies to himself, so no experience lives and dies to itself. Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience. The central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experience that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences. John Dewey, 1938 When I think about I learned in high . . . . . it's a wonder I can think at all. Paul Simon all school . the . crap .

Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner; put yourself in his place so that you may understand . . . what he learns and the way he understands it. Soren Kierkegaard The desire to know is far more important than achievement and/or performance measures. Caine & Caine It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. Albert Einstein 1940 The teacher is one who made two ideas grow where only one grew before. Elbert Hubbard Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students. Alfie Kohn It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. Albert Einstein Education, properly understood, is that which teaches discernment. Joseph Roux

Courses in education given at...teachers' colleges have traditionally been used as a substitute for genuine scholarship. In my opinion, much of the so-called science of "education" was invented as a necessary mechanism for enabling semi-educated people to act as tolerable teachers. Sloan Wilson I have visited sweatshops, factories, and crowded slums. If I could not see it, I could smell it. The foundation of society is laid upon a basis of . . . individualism, conquest and exploitation . . . A social order such as this, built upon such wrong and basic principles, is bound to retard the development of all. The output of a cotton mill or a coal mine is considered of greater importance than the production of healthy, happy-hearted and free human beings. We, the people, are not free. Our democracy is but a name. Helen Keller If the student-written text is to go beyond the stories about generals and millionaires and queens and kings, teachers have to help their students, in one way or other, to discover and record the voices of the common men and women who reflect the real life out of which all history is made. This is especially the case in writing about minorities, as well as about women. Our tendency is to attempt to make up for the errors of the past by listing (and praising) as many notable blacks, or women, as we can possibly "collect"--in order, it seems, to struggle back in kind against all of those white male Anglo-Saxon figures who now dominate the school curricula. We continue, however, to write about important people, prize-winning people, blacks of grandeur, women of great fire, fame or wit. We do not write about ordinary people. Jonathon Kozol On Being a Teacher

I Taught Them All I have taught high school for 10 years. During that time, I have given assignments, among others, to a murderer, an evangelist, a pugilist, a thief, and an imbecile. The murderer was a quiet little boy who sat on the front seat and regarded me with pale blue eyes; the evangelist, easily the most popular boy in school, had the lead in the junior play; the pugilist lounged by the window and let loose at intervals a raucous laugh that startled even the geraniums; the thief was a gay-hearted Lothario with a song on his lips; and the imbecile, a soft-eyed little animal seeking the shadows. The murderer awaits death in the state penitentiary; the evangelist has lain a year now in the village churchyard; the pugilist lost an eye in a brawl in Hong Kong; the thief, by standing on tiptoe, can see the windows of my room from the county jail; and the once gentle-eyed little moron beats his head against a padded wall in the state asylum. All of these pupils once sat in my room, sat and looked at me gravely across worn brown desks. I must have been a great help to those pupils--I taught them the rhyming scheme of the Elizabethan sonnet and how to diagram a complex sentence. Naomi White 1937 "Insight into soul-action, ability to discriminate the genuine from the sham and capacity to further one and discourage the other." John Dewey I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a student's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides

whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a student humanized or de-humanized. Hiam Ginott

The "Hidden Curriculum" The teacher "teaches" and the students "sit and listen" or learn passively. There is one "right answer" to any question, and it is in the book to be read. The answer to most questions can be given in one or two words, and no one will challenge you to go deeper. Books and teachers are always "right", and we learn only from them, not from any other resource in the room, such as our friends. If we wait long enough, a teacher will answer her own question, so we won't have to do much work. The teacher is the only one worth listening to. If we ask enough questions about a difficult assignment, we can get the teacher to make it easier and less demanding. "Thinking" is not something we talk about. If I memorize enough stuff, I can get a good grade. Most tasks and tests will demand recall of isolated pieces of information, and I will not have to show how concepts and ideas are related or how facts illustrate underlying principles. Barrell (1991) To say that you have taught when students haven't learned is to say you have sold when no one has bought. But how can you know that students have learned without spending hours correcting tests and papers? . . . check students understanding while you are teaching (not at 10 o'clock at night when you're correcting papers) so you don't move on with unlearned material that can accumulate like a snowball and eventually engulf the student in confusion and despair. Madeline Hunter, 1989 Only through education does one come to be dissatisfied with his own knowledge, and only through teaching others does one come to realize the uncomfortable inadequacy of his knowledge. Being dissatisfied with his own knowledge, one then realizes that the trouble lies with himself, and realizing the uncomfortable inadequacy of his knowledge one then feels stimulated to improve himself. Therefore, it is said, "the processes of teaching and learning stimulate one another." Confucius, circa 500 BCE I wake up every morning determined both to change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day a little difficult. E. B. White That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. Doris Lessing Pick Battles big enough to matter, small enough to win Jonathon Kozol

What Teacher Education Programs forget to tell their candidates: A teacher cannot be all things to all people You are not a "bad person" if you are not always able to meet all the needs of all your students You are a powerful and compelling figure in the lives of your students In recalling their school years, students mostly remember their teachers, and not the courses they took You need to find a "critical friend" whom you can trust to serve as a sounding board At times students can be very cruel, difficult, and mean-spirited It is a mistake to personalize a student's unacceptable behavior Teachers love their students as their parents love them--but in a different way and for a different reason

Few people will ever appreciate the amount of time and effort teachers give to their teaching By choosing to be a teacher, you have entered an emotionally dangerous profession You are both a role model and change agent You need to pay attention to both your physical and emotional well-being Teaching is not like inducing a chemical reaction, but more like creating a painting, or planting a garden, or writing a friendly letter. Teaching is a complicated business because students are such unexpected blends of character, personality, and background Most of the significant advances in civilization have been the result of the work of teachers Teaching is an act of faith in the promise of the future Teaching is a way of life James Marran, Social Studies Dept. Chair New Trier High School, Winnetka, Ill.

TEACHING AS A SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITY By Postman & Weingartner 1. Declare a five-year moratorium on the use of all textbooks 2. Have English teachers teach Math, Math teachers English, Social Studies teachers science, Science teachers Art, and so on. 3. Transfer all elementary teachers to high school and vice versa. 4. Require every teacher who thinks he knows his subject well to write a book on it. 5. Dissolve all subjects, courses, and course requirements. 6. Limit each teacher to three declarative sentences per class, and 15 interrogatives. 7. Prohibit teachers from asking any questions they already know the answers to. 8. Declare a moratorium on all tests and grades. 9. Require all teachers to undergo some form of psychotherapy as part of their in-service training 10. Classify teachers according to their ability and make the lists public. 11. Require all teachers to take a test prepared by students on what the students know. 12. Make every class an elective and withhold a teacher's monthly check if his students do not show any interest in going to next month's classes. 13. Require every teacher to take a one-year leave of absence every fourth year to work in some other field other than education. 14. Require each teacher to provide some sort of evidence that he or she has had a loving relationship with at least one other human being. 15. Require that all the graffiti accumulated in the school toilets be reproduced on large paper and be hung in the school halls. 16. There should be a general prohibition against the use of the following words and phrases: Teach, syllabus, covering ground, I.Q., makeup, test, disadvantaged, gifted, accelerated, enhancement, course, grade, score, human nature, dumb, college material, and administrative necessity.

THE POOR SCHOLAR'S SOLILOQUY Stephen "Childhood January 1944 M. Corey Education"

No, I'm not very good in school. This is my second year in the seventh grade, and I'm bigger and taller than the other kids. They like me all right, though, even if I don't say much in the classroom, because

outside I can tell them how to do a lot of things. They tag me around and that sort of makes up for what goes on in school. I don't know why the teachers don't like me. They never have very much. Seems like they don't think you know anything unless you can name the books it comes out of. I've got a lot of books in my room at home-books like Popular Science Mechanical Encyclopedia, and the Sears & Wards catalogues--but I don't sit down and read them like they make us do in school. I use my books when I want to find something out, like whenever mom buys anything second-hand I look it up in Sears or Wards first and tell her if she's getting stung or not. I can use the index in a hurry. In school, though, we've got to learn whatever is in the book and I just can't memorize the stuff. Last year I stayed after school every night for two weeks trying to learn the names of the presidents. Of course, I knew some of them--like Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, but there must have been thirty altogether, and I never did get them straight. I'm not too sorry though, because the kids who learned the presidents had to turn right around and learn all the vice-presidents. I am taking the seventh grade over, but our teacher this year isn't so interested in the names of the presidents. She has us trying to learn the names of all the great American inventors. I guess I just can't remember the names in history. Anyway, this year I've been trying to learn about trucks because my uncle owns three, and he says I can drive one when I'm sixteen. I already know the horsepower and number of forward and backward speeds of twenty-six American trucks, some of them Diesels, and I can spot each make a long way off. It's funny how that Diesel works. I started to tell my teacher about it last Wednesday in science class when the pump we were using to make a vacuum in a bell jar got hot, but she, didn't see what a Diesel engine had to do with our experiment on air pressure, so I just kept still. The kids seemed interested though. I took four of them around to my uncle's garage after school, and we saw the mechanic, Gus, tear a big truck Diesel down. Boy does he know his stuff! I'm not very good in geography either. They call it economic geography this year. We've been studying the imports and exports of Chile all week, but I couldn't tell what they are. Maybe the reason is I had to miss school yesterday because my uncle took me and his big truck down and we brought almost 10 tons of livestock to the Chicago market. He had told me where we were going, and I had to figure out the highways to take and also the mileage. He didn't do anything but drive and turn where I told him to, Was that fun. I sat with a map in my lap, and told him to turn south, or southeast, or some other direction. We made seven stops, and drove over 500 miles round trip. I'm figuring now what his oil cost, and also the wear and tear on the truck--he calls it depreciation--so we'll know how much we made. I even write out all the bills and send letters to the farmers about what their pigs and beef cattle brought at the stockyards. I only made three mistakes in 17 letters last time, my aunt said, all commas. She's been through high school and reads them over. I wish I could write school themes that way. The last one I had to write was on, "What a Daffodil Thinks of Spring," and I just couldn't get going. I don't do very well in school in arithmetic either. Seems I just can't keep my mind on the problems. We had one the other day like this: If a 57 foot telephone pole falls across a cement highway so that 17 3/6 feet extended from one side and 14 9/17 feet from the other how wide is the highway? That seemed to me like an awfully silly way to get the width of a highway. I didn't even try to answer it because it didn't say whether the pole had fallen straight across or not. Even in shop I don't get very good grades. All of us kids made a broom holder and bookend this term, and mine were sloppy. I just couldn't get interested. Mom doesn't use a broom anymore with her vacuum

cleaner, and all our books are in a bookcase with glass doors in the living room. Anyway, I wanted to make an end gate for my uncle's trailer, but the shop teacher said that meant using metal and wood both, and I'd have to learn how to work with wood first. I didn't see why, but I kept still and made a tie rack at school and the tail gate after school at my uncle's garage. He said I saved him ten dollars. Civics is hard for me, too. I've been staying after school trying to learn the "Articles of Confederation" for almost a week, because the teacher said we couldn't be a good citizen unless we did. I really tried, though, because I want to be a good citizen. I did hate to stay after school because a bunch of boys from the south end of town have been cleaning up the old lot across from Taylor's Machine Shop to make a playground out of it for the little kids from the Methodist home. I made the jungle gym from old pipe. We raised enough money collecting scrap this month to build a wire fence clear around the lot. Dad says I can quit school when I am sixteen, and I am sort of anxious because there are a lot of things I want to learn--and as my uncle says, I'm not getting any younger.

Responsibility for learning belongs to the student, regardless of age Robert Martin Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it Allan Bloom A student never forgets an encouraging private word, when it is given with sincere respect and admiration. William Lyon Phelps There is a brilliant child locked inside every student Marva Collins One mark of a great educator is the ability to lead students out to new places where even the educator has never been Thomas Groome What students lack in school is an intellectual relationship or conversation with the teacher. William Glasser Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new. Og Mandino Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed. Marva Collins No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know Woodrow T. Wilson Students of cunning have consumed their hearts and learned only tricks; they've thrown away real riches: patience, self-sacrifice, generosity. Rich thought opens the way. Mevlana Rumi It must be remembered that the purpose of education is not to fill the minds of students with factsit is to teach them to think. Robert M. Hutchins Too often students are given answers to remember, rather than problems to solve Roger Lewin Students rarely disappoint teachers who assure them in advance that they are doomed to failure

Sidney Hook A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences. Amos Bronson Alcott Today's students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude. Jesse Jackson Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time. Robertson Davies Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves--and be free. Cesar Chavez The faster you go, the more students you leave behind. It doesn't matter how much or how fast you teach. The true measure is how much students have learned. William Glasser Theories and goals of education don't matter a whit if you don't consider your students to be human beings Lou Ann Walker Wise teachers create an environment that encourages students to teach themselves Leonard Roy Frank Harvard takes perfectly good plums as students, and turns them into prunes. Frank Lloyd Wright Nowadays, all students have access to and indeed most own computers and are comfortable with the software used to compose music. There are probably too many musical options for them now and the trick is to limit the number of musical ideas so as to develop structure and continuity in their work. Jon Howard Appleton We must realise that prophetic cry of black students: "Black man you are on your own!" Do not let your grand ambitions stand in the way of small but meaningful accomplishments. Bryant McGill

President George W. Bush is the first American president to call openly for two-states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. Lee H. Hamilton

Friends will keep you sane, Love could fill your heart, A lover can warm your bed, But lonely is the soul without a mate. David Pratt

The soul of man is nourished by learning, as the body is by food.

Bartholomew of San Concordio

Poverty wants few things, avarice everything. Bartholomew of San Concordio

The death clock is ticking slowly in our breast, and each drop of blood measures its time, and our life is a lingering fever. Karl Georg Bchner

Rather than continuing to seek the truth, simply let go of your views. Gautama Buddha

Someone\\\'s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. Warren Edward Buffett

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. Warren Edward Buffett

A girl in a convertible is worth five in the phonebook. Warren Edward Buffett