Philosophical and Psychological Foundations of Education

QUOTATIONS BY TOPIC

The Art of Teaching

Teaching is an art; the teacher is an artist. ~ Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads

Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves. An intermediary inventive mind must make the application, by using its originality. . . . A science only lays down lines within which the rules of art must fall. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

The differences between persons is not in wisdom but in art. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Intellect"

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

The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows. One teacher’s mind will fairly coruscate with points of connection between the new lesson and the circumstances of the children’s other experience. Anecdotes and reminiscences will abound in her talk; and the new shuttle of interest will shoot backward and forwards, weaving the new and the old together in a lively and entertaining way. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

Teaching holds a mirror to the soul. ~ Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

The exercise of the art and practice of teaching (a specifically human art), is of itself profoundly formational and, for that reason, ethical. True, those who exercise this art and practice do not have to be saints or angels. But they ought to have integrity and a clear sense of what is right and just. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

This is the road I have tried to follow as a teacher: living my convictions; being open to the process of knowing and sensitive to the experience of teaching as an art; being pushed forward by the challenges that prevent me from bureaucratizing my practice; accepting my limitations, yet always conscious of the necessary effort to overcome them and aware that I cannot hide them because to do so would be a failure to respect both my students and myself as a teacher. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

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Last updated:
September 19, 2008 4:23 PM