Philosophical and Psychological Foundations of Education

QUOTATIONS BY TOPIC

CURRICULUM

Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance, and of all the qualities contrary to these, and of the other qualities of character, which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know from our own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change. ~ Aristotle, Politics

The source of whatever is dead, mechanical, and formal in schools is found precisely in the subordination of the life and experience of the child to the curriculum. ~ John Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum

The best experience indicates that instruction should be interdepartmental. ~ Sidney Hook, "Education for Modern Man"

The key-stress in courses in art and music should be discrimination and interpretation, rather than appreciation and cultivation. ~ Sidney Hook, "Education for Modern Man"

There are any number of ways to divide up a subject and any number of ways to integrate the resultant parts. ~ Jane Roland Martin, "Two Dogmas of Curriculum"

In education, as in life, appearances can be deceptive. To discover what is taking place one must look behind and beyond the overt behavior of both students and teachers for intentions which are not always obvious to the naked eye. ~ Jane Roland Martin, "Two Dogmas of Curriculum"

When true curricular reform is wanted, simply extending the range of learning activities and materials, important as this may be, is not sufficient. ~ Jane Roland Martin, "Two Dogmas of Curriculum"

The grip of tradition and habit is strong. ~ Jane Roland Martin, "Two Dogmas of Curriculum"

One of our most deeply entrenched assumptions about curriculum is that the basics are immutable givens. ~ Jane Roland Martin, "Two Dogmas of Curriculum"

The curriculum promotes a shared discourse that, in an age of inescapable specialization, bridges the disciplines and sustains communication among educated persons. ~ Theodore de Bary, "Asia in the Core Curriculum"

If intellectual diversity and cultural pluralism are to survive in universities, they must tend the roots of their own cultures and nurture whatever there still is of distinctive excellence in their own traditions. ~ Theodore de Bary, "Asia in the Core Curriculum"

Can justice be done to the distinctive features of each tradition in a one-year survey? One can have something like "globality" in the academic equivalent of a one-year shopping mall, but nothing like the intimate personal experience of life in a village, or the sense of identification with a community for which one takes some personal responsibility. ~ Theodore de Bary, "Asia in the Core Curriculum"

A good classroom is a free-speech zone, where everything can be expressed, and where, at times, one will read authors who are not, in the teacher's opinion, conducive to a form of the good life, but are prophets of cruelty and hatred. ~ Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, p. 85

We need to learn not simply to read books, but to allow ourselves to be read by them. ~ Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, p. 46

True education, as Friedrich Schiller rightly saw it, ought to fuse mind and heart. Current education in the liberal arts does precisely the opposite. At the end of this road lies a human type bitterly and memorably described in Weber: 'Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.' ~ Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, p. 45

Back to top

Last updated:
September 19, 2008 4:23 PM