Pedagogy Quotes

“Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.”
― Confucius, The Sayings of Confucius

“School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

“Now, it is the view of the Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be more than sufficient to get you through your examination, which, after all, is what school is all about.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.”
― Freeman John Dyson

“In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.”
― Charles S. Peirce

“Generally in life, knowledge is acquired to be used. But school learning more often fits Freire's apt metaphor: knowledge is treated like money, to be put away in a bank for the future.”
― Seymour Papert, The Children's Machine: Rethinking School In The Age Of The Computer

“The 'polymath' had already died out by the close of the eighteenth century, and in the following century intensive education replaced extensive, so that by the end of it the specialist had evolved. The consequence is that today everyone is a mere technician, even the artist...”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“The best learning is achieved through experience, not by instruction. Though instruction is sometimes necessary and helpful, it is often best to foster conditions and allow conditions whereby students learn through experience.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr., Principles of a Poinciana School

“The art of handling university students is to make oneself appear, and this almost ostentatiously, to be treating them as adults...”
― Arnold Joseph Toynbee, Experiences

“Education must be cultivated, not force fed.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr., Principles of a Poinciana School

“From the will of a freedom-fighter, Farzad Kamangar:
"Is it possible to be a teacher and not show the path to the sea to the little fish of the country?
Is it possible to carry the heavy burden of being a teacher and be responsible for spreading the seeds of knowledge and still be silent? Is it possible to see the lumps in the throats of the students and witness their thin and malnourished faces and keep quiet? …
I cannot imagine witnessing the pain and poverty of the people of this land and fail to give our hearts to the river and the sea, to the roar and the flood.”
― Samad Beh-Rang

“It is feminist thinking that empowers me to engage in a constructive critique of [Paulo] Freire’s work (which I needed so that as a young reader of his work I did not passively absorb the worldview presented) and yet there are many other standpoints from which I approach his work that enable me to experience its value, that make it possible for that work to touch me at the very core of my being. In talking with academic feminists (usually white women) who feel they must either dismiss or devalue the work of Freire because of sexism, I see clearly how our different responses are shaped by the standpoint that we bring to the work. I came to Freire thirsty, dying of thirst (in that way that the colonized, marginalized subject who is still unsure of how to break the hold of the status quo, who longs for change, is needy, is thirsty), and I found in his work (and the work of Malcolm X, Fanon, etc.) a way to quench that thirst. To have work that promotes one’s lib­eration is such a powerful gift that it does not matter so much if the gift is flawed. Think of the work as water that contains some dirt. Because you are thirsty you are not too proud to extract the dirt and be nourished by the water. For me this is an experience that corresponds very much to the way individuals of privilege respond to the use of water in the First World context. When you are privileged, living in one of the richest countries in the world, you can waste resources. And you can especially justify your dispos­al of something that you consider impure. Look at what most people do with water in this country. Many people purchase special water because they consider tap water unclean—and of course this purchasing is a luxury. Even our ability to see the water that come through the tap as unclean is itself informed by an imperialist consumer per­ spective. It is an expression of luxury and not just simply a response to the condition of water. If we approach the drinking of water that comes from the tap from a global perspective we would have to talk about it differently. We would have to consider what the vast majority of the peo­ ple in the world who are thirsty must do to obtain water. Paulo’s work has been living water for me.”
― bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

“To create a community where faith matters not just in theory but in reality, faith has to be a public value, not just a private one.”
― Donna Freitas, Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses

“Amantes Assemble Sonnet 51

Education alone won't change anything,
First we gotta rid education of all archaism.
Rather than being a tool of indoctrination,
Education oughta be a force of undoctrination.
Education ought to be secular,
Education ought to be nonsectarian.
Sectarianism that passes as education,
Is the very antithesis of education.
Scriptures can be a part of education,
But they mustn't be the basis of education.
Cultures can be a part of education,
But they mustn't be the basis of education.
Any force that claims to liberate the mind,
Must first liberate itself from all divide.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“Liberation of the Spirit

As a girl, touched by the mystical dimensions of Christian faith, I felt the presence of the Beloved in my heart: the oneness of our life. At that time, when I had not yet learned the right language, I knew only that despite the troubles of my world, the suffering I witnessed around and within me, there was always available a spiritual force that could lift me higher, that could give me moments of transcendent bliss wherein I could surrender all thought of the world and know profound peace.
Early on, my heart had been touched by its delight. I knew its rapture. Early on, I made a commitment to be a seeker on the path: a seeker after truth. I was determined to live a life in the spirit. The black theologian James Cone says that our survival and liberation depend upon our recognition of the truth when it is spoken and lived:

'If we cannot recognize the truth, then it cannot liberate us from untruth. To know the truth is to prepare for it; for it is not mainly reflection and theory. Truth is divine action entering our lives and creating the human action of liberation.'

In reflecting on my youth, I emphasize the mystical dimension of the Christian faith because it was that aspect of religious experience that I found to be truly liberatory. The more fundamental religious beliefs that were taught to me urging blind obedience to authority and acceptance of oppressive hierarchies-- this didn't move me. no, it was those mystical experiences that enabled me to understand and recognize the realm of being in a spiritual experience that transcends both authority and law.”
― bell hooks, Teaching Community

“What if upon entering the classroom, children find teachers listening attentively for their questions and stories, demonstrating a willingness to engage them in "playing out" their ideas using classroom materials while their propensity to ask questions is at its peak? What if well-educated teachers are guiding children to observe, discuss, imagine, and debate possibilities in the company of their equally eager peers? Our youngest children could,be in such conservatories of educational excellence in our public stools, preparing for their future in school and beyond.”
― Gillian Dowley McNamee, The High-Performing Preschool: Story Acting in Head Start Classrooms

“Education founded on competition, is but mental malnutrition.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Right or Human: 300 Limericks of Inclusion

“There is a movement afoot to convince artists that they are simply another type of entrepreneur. On the surface, this is a seemingly harmless and understandable rejection of the starving artist trope. Yet people seem to have forgotten that, since the beginning of recorded history, artists' cultural role went far beyond simply making a product to peddle.”
― Kate Kretz, Art from Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice

“our pedagogical hubris: that is, “our belief that man can do what God cannot, namely, manipulate others for their own salvation.”
― Ivan Illich

“Adolescents can divert this hatred from their parents if they are given a clear-cut enemy whom they are permitted to hate freely and with impunity. This may be why so many young painters and writers volunteered for the front in World War I. The hope of freeing themselves from the constraints imposed by their family enabled them to take pleasure in marching to the music of a military band. One of heroin’s roles is to replace this function, with the difference that in the case of drugs the destructive rage is directed against one’s own body and self.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Adolescents can divert this hatred from their parents if they are given a clear-cut enemy whom they are permitted to hate freely and with impunity. This may be why so many young painters and writers volunteered for the front in World War I. The hope of freeing themselves from the constraints imposed by their family enabled them to take pleasure in marching to the music of a military band.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Education Through Excellence (The Sonnet)

During my aimless years I once had an urge,
To learn about jet propulsion engine.
So I wrote content for tech support websites,
To buy a couple of books on aeronautics.
Education means catering to curiosity,
Study to gain excellence not a certificate.
If it doesn't open your eyes to social ascension,
Education only causes the world to dehydrate.
You can stuff entire encyclopedias into your head,
That still will not make you an educated being.
If education was the same thing as information,
Google would be the omniscient superbeing.
Certificate without humanity is a ticket to stoneage.
If it takes away your warmth, it is all decadence.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None

“Real education starts with uneducation. Once you understand this, you'll understand education.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yarasistan: My Wounds, My Crown

“I have always thought that the most sacred duty of men was to give their children an education that would prevent them, when they were older, from regretting their youth, which is the only time when one can truly get an education; you, my dear son, have now arrived at this happy age when the mind begins to think, and when the heart isn't yet subject to those intense emotions that will later come to disturb it.”
― Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil du Châtelet, Reason, Illusion, and Passion: Philosophical Works

“Teachers are responsible for showing what an inclusive, caring community looks like, expressing confidence in the goal, and articulating how to make it work.”
― Gillian Dowley McNamee, The High-Performing Preschool: Story Acting in Head Start Classrooms

“Well into my teaching career, I learned that good and bad play are usually a matter of having a script that works or one that needs to be rewritten. Once you begin to depend on storytelling and story acting, you start looking at your classrooms as theater. The children are constantly imagining characters and plots and, when they have a chance, with each other, acting out little stories. You can look at the children and yourself as actors. "Well, this hasn't worked. We'd better think of a better way to pretend this story." What seems to be a chaotic scene, one we might call bad play, is simply a scene that lacks closure for one or more characters.

The teacher's role is to help the children make up a new scene. The children become used to the teachers - or even other children - saying, "This isn't working. We need to tell the story of what were doing with each other. What characters are we playing? And what needs to be played in a different way so that the play does not have to stop?" (via a Meghan Dombrick-Green interview with Vivian Paley 2001)”
― Gillian Dowley McNamee, The High-Performing Preschool: Story Acting in Head Start Classrooms

“Can you remember? when we thought
the poets taught how to live?”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“Et vanlig munnhell sier at skolen ikke er et sted for å være, men et sted for å lære.
Dette er sant. Men det er også viktig at skolen er et sted der vi sørger for å nære, ikke tære.”
― Ole Martin Moen, Skolens omsorgssvikt

“Hvis problemet er at skolen straffer manglende oppmøte, bør straffingen - snarere enn det manglende oppmøtet som sådan - identifiseres som problemet. Hvis det er noe skolen/lærere gjør som skaper problemer for barnet, så si det eksplisitt. Ikke beskytt den sterke og profesjonelle parten i relasjonen ved å være høflig, og dermed plassere et problem i barnet når det ikke hører hjemme der.”
― Ole Martin Moen, Skolens omsorgssvikt

“It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry.”
― Dana Gioia, Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture