Philosophical and Psychological Foundations of Education

QUOTATIONS BY TOPIC

STUDENTS

The students we teach are larger than life and even more complex. To see them clearly and see them whole, and respond to them wisely in the moment, requires a fusion of Freud and Solomon that few of us achieve. ~ Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

Beneath that veneer of cool, students are full of potent questions; they want to know how to navigate life, what to be, what to do. ~ Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, p. 28

The child will always attend more to what a teacher does than to what the same teacher says. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

Kids are tougher critics than teachers. ~ Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education, p. 94

Be patient, then, and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations. It may, in the long examination which life sets us, come out in the end in better shape than the glib and ready reproducer, its passions being deeper, its purposes more worthy, its combining power less commonplace, and its total mental output consequently more important. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

The student in infinitely more important than the subject matter. ~ Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminist Approach to Ethics and Moral Education

What [students] will not generally do, though, is indict the current system. ~ Mark Edmundson, "On the Uses of a Liberal Education"

What children can do with the assistance of others might be in some sense even more indicative of their mental development than what they can do alone. ~ Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society

Why not establish an intimate connection between knowledge considered basic to any school curriculum and knowledge that is the fruit of the lived experience of these students as individuals? ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

It is impossible to talk of respect for students for the dignity that is in the process of coming to be, for the identities that are in the process of construction, without taking into consideration the conditions in which they are living and the importance of the knowledge derived from life experience, which they bring with them to school. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

The perception the student has of my teaching is not exclusively the result of how I act but also of how the student understands my action. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

We need to be open to the possibility that our current students, who are less rebellious than any group I have encountered, may well know things that we do not. ~ Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, p. 115

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

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Last updated:
September 19, 2008 4:23 PM