Philosophical and Psychological Foundations of Education

QUOTATIONS BY TOPIC

Teaching & Learning

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple. ~ A. Bronson Alcott, The Teacher

His goodness, as Emerson like to say, always had an edge to it. ~ Mark Edmundson, Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference

Every [woman's] progress is through a succession of teachers, each of whom seems at the time to have a superlative influence, but it at last gives place to a new. Frankly let [her] accept it all. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Intellect"

One of the most important jobs a teacher has is to allow students to make contact with their ignorance. ~ Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, p. 35

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn. ~ Robert Frost

The principal agent in education, the primary dynamic factor or propelling force, is the internal vital principle in the one to be educated . . . ~ Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads

We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master. ~ Maria Montessori

Any education which considers the teacher as the principal agent perverts the very nature of the educational task. ~ Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads

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

But on the whole we should try to draw out [children's] own ideas, founded on reason, rather than to introduce such ideas into their minds. ~ Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows and rows of natural objects, classified with name and form. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is much easier for a tutor to command than to teach. ~ John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

He who would learn to command well must, as men say, first of all learn to obey. ~ Aristotle, Politics

As in so many other fields of teaching, success depends mainly on the native genius of the teacher, the sympathy, tact, and perception which enable him to seize the right moment and to set the right example. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

The great skill of a teacher is to get and keep the attention of his scholar. . . . To attain this, he should make the child comprehend (as much as may be) the usefulness of what he teaches him; and let him see, by what he has learned, that he can do something which he could not do before; something which gives him some power and real advantage above others, who are ignorant of it. To this he should add sweetness in all his instructions; and by a certain tenderness in his whole carriage, make the child sensible that he loves him, and designs nothing but his good; the only way to beget love in the child, which will make him hearken to his lessons, and relish what he teaches him. ~ John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

The best way of cultivating the mental faculties is to do ourselves all that we wish to accomplish. . . . The best way to understand is to do. That which we learn most thoroughly, and remember the best, is what we have in a way taught ourselves. ~ Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

So there is no scientific question as to whether experience, learning, and practice affect the brain; they surely do if we are even vaguely on the right track. ~ Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate, Chapter 5

Is there no way of bringing together all the lessons scattered through a multitude of books and grouping them together round some common object which, even at this age, might be easy to see, interesting to follow and thought-provoking? ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile

When the geography and English and history and arithmetic simultaneously make cross-references to one another, you get an interesting set of processes all along the line. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

Be simple and hold yourself in check, you zealous teachers. Never be in a hurry to act. So far as you can, refrain from a good instruction for fear of giving a bad one. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile

But in teaching children we must seek insensibly to unite knowledge with the carrying out of that knowledge into practice. . . . Further, knowledge and speech (ease in speaking, fluency, eloquence) must be united. ~ Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

It is, however, not enough that children should be merely broken in; for it is of greater importance that they shall learn to think. By learning to think, man comes to act according to fixed principles and not at random. ~ Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

All learning affects the brain. It is undeniably exciting when scientists make a discovery about how learning affects the brain, but that does not make the learning itself any more pervasive or profound. ~ Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate, Chapter 5

Children ought to be educated, not for the present, but for a possibly improved condition of man in the future; that is, in a manner which is adapted to the idea of humanity and the whole destiny of man. ~ Immanuel Kant, Thoughts on Education

To keep them where you have called them, you must make the subject too interesting for them to wander again. And for that there is one prescription; but the prescription, like all our prescriptions, is abstract, and, to get practical results from it, you must couple it with mother-wit. The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

The teacher must pounce upon the most listless child, and wake him up. The habit of prompt and ready response must be kept up. Recapitulations, illustrations, examples, novelty of order, and ruptures of routine,--all these are means for keeping the attention alive and contributing a little interest to a dull subject. Above all, the teacher must himself be alive and ready, and must use the contagion of his own example. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

When all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, while others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper springs of human personality to conduct the task. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

No one wants to hear a lecture on a subject completely disconnected with his previous knowledge, but we all like lectures on subjects of which we know a little already . . . The genius of the interesting teacher consists in sympathetic divination of the sort of material with which the pupil’s mind is likely to be already spontaneously engaged, and in the ingenuity which discovers paths of connection from that material to the matters to be newly learned. The principle is easy to grasp, but the accomplishment is difficult in the extreme. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

The teacher ought always to impress the class through as many sensible channels as he can. Talk and write and draw on blackboard, permit the pupils to talk, and make them write and draw, exhibit pictures, plans, and curves, have your diagrams colored differently in their different parts, etc.; and out of the whole variety of impressions the individual child will find the most lasting ones for himself. This principle of multiplying channels and varying associations and appeals is important, not only for teaching pupils to remember, but for teaching them to understand. It runs, in fact, through the whole teaching art.~ William James, Talks to Teachers

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

If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples. If it be unfamiliar, trace some point of analogy in it with the known. If it be inhuman, make it figure as part of a story. If it be difficult, couple its acquisition with some prospect of personal gain. Above all things, make sure that it shall run through certain inner changes, since no unvarying object can possibly hold the mental field for long. Let your pupil wander from one aspect to another of your subject, if you do not wish him to wander from it altogether to something else, variety in unity being the secret of all interesting talk and thought. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

In working associations into your pupils’ minds, you must not rely on single cues, but multiply the cues as much as possible. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

Your task is to build up a character in your pupils; and a character, as I have so often said, consists in an organized set of habits of reaction. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

Preaching and talking too soon become an ineffectual bore. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

Soft pedagogics have taken the place of the old steep and rocky path to learning. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

I cannot but think that to apperceive your pupil as a little sensitive, impulsive, associative, and reactive organism, partly fated and party free, will lead to a better intelligence of all his ways. Understand him, then, as such a subtle little piece of machinery. And if, in addition, you can also see him sub specie boni, and love him as well, you will be in the best possible position for becoming perfect teachers. ~ William James, Talks to Teachers

There is a gap between the knowledge, skills, or state of mind of the learner and what he is to learn, which it seems to me any teaching activity must seek to bridge if it is to deserve that label. Teaching activities must therefore take place at a level where the pupil can take on what it is intended he should learn. ~ Paul Hirst, "What Is Teaching?"

The teacher receives and accepts the student's feelings toward the subject matter; she looks at it and listens to it through his eyes and ears. How else can she interpret the subject matter for him? ~ Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminist Approach to Ethics and Moral Education

Every classroom is an act of making citizens in the realm of that room, and every room is a figure for the larger community. ~ A. Bartlett Giamatti, "To Make Oneself Eternal," from A Free and Ordered Space

The very first choice teachers make . . . [is] to make themselves vulnerable, vulnerable to those others who are the future, in order to make what is made by the mind eternal. ~ A. Bartlett Giamatti, "To Make Oneself Eternal," from A Free and Ordered Space

Teachers at all levels of education have more in common than we think, and we should not be so glib about which level we call "higher." ~ Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher. ~ Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

Unlike many professions, teaching is always done at the dangerous intersection of personal and public life. ~ Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

To become a better teacher, I must nurture a sense of self that both does and does not depend on the responses of others—and that is a true paradox. ~ Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

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

The only "good learning" is that which is in advance of development. ~ Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society

To teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

There is, in fact, no teaching without learning. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

The role of the educator is one of a tranquil possession of certitude in regard to the teaching not only of contents but also of "correct thinking." ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

The good teacher is the one who manages to draw the student into the intimacy of his or her thought process while speaking. The class then becomes a challenge and not simply a nest where people gather. In the environment of challenge, the students become tired but they do not fall asleep. They get tired because they accompany the comings and goings of the teacher's thought and open their eyes in wonder at his or her pauses, doubts, uncertainties. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

Teachers who do not take their own education seriously, who do not study, who make little effort to keep abreast of events have no moral authority to coordinate the activities of the classroom. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

I cannot be a teacher and be in favor of everyone and everything. I cannot be in favor merely of people, humanity, vague phrases far from the concrete nature of educative practice. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

As a strictly human experience, I could never treat education as something cold, mental, merely technical, and without soul, where feelings, sensibility, desires, and dreams had no place, as if repressed by some kind of reactionary dictatorship. In addition, I never saw educative practice as an experience that could be considered valid if it lacked rigor and intellectual discipline. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

As a teacher, you do not wait for readiness to happen; you foster or "scaffold" it by deepening the child's powers at the stage where you find him or her now. ~ Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education, p. 120

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Last updated:
September 19, 2008 4:23 PM