Philosophical and Psychological Foundations of Education

QUOTATIONS BY TOPIC

HONESTY

Where mendacity, treachery, obscenity, and malignity find unhampered expression, talk can be brilliant indeed. But its flame waxes dim where the mind is stitched all over with conscientious fear of violating the moral and social proprieties. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

It takes two to speak the truth,—one to speak, and another to hear. ~ Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Trust must be reciprocal—to be sincere, speakers must trust their listeners. ~ Frank Pajares, The Psychologizing of Teacher Education

As children's inquiries are not to be slighted, so also great care is to be taken, that they never receive deceitful and illuding answers. They easily perceive when they are slighted or deceived, and quickly learn the trick of neglect, dissimulation, and falsehood, which they observe others to make use of. We are not to intrench upon truth in any conversation, but least of all with children; since, if we play false with them, we not only deceive their expectation, and hinder their knowledge, but corrupt their innocence, and teach them the worst of vices. ~ John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Let us be on guard against presenting the truth to those unable to comprehend it. The effect of that is to substitute error for truth. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile

Character consists in the firm purpose to accomplish something, and then also in the actual accomplishing of it. . . . For instance, if a man makes a promise, he must keep it, however inconvenient it may be to himself; for a man who makes a resolution and fails to keep it will have no more confidence in himself. ~ Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

Now we can always be frank in our demeanour, provided our frankness be united with a certain kindness. . . . ~ Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

Teachers must never let their commitment to excellence deteriorate into knee-jerk mean-spiritedness, but, barring this deterioration, agape helps me look through the confusion of my own emotional softness to the kind of responsibility that I and my students must both be tough enough to accept if we are both to avoid forming habits of evasion and rationalization that can last a life time. ~ Marshall Gregory, "Pedagogy and the Three Loves"

When tact is stretched into indirectness or transformed into perceptibly calculated gentleness, it may render criticism ineffective and offend the intended beneficiary. ~ Robert Audi, On the Ethics of Teaching and the Ideals of Learning

Students must feel fully free to raise questions, and to contribute critically to discussions, without the fear that merely by disagreeing or by making errors they will harm their prospects. ~ Robert Audi, On the Ethics of Teaching and the Ideals of Learning

The student must be willing to become as articulate as possible about what he has believed—or what he has been asked to believe—up until this point. He must be willing to tell himself who he is and has been, and possibly, why that will no longer quite do. ~ Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, p. 34

The best beginning reader is often the one with the wherewithal to admit that, living in the midst of what appears to be a confident, energetic culture, he among all the rest is lost. ~ Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, p. 33

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

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Last updated:
September 19, 2008 4:23 PM