quotations about teaching
Teaching is the systematic inculcation of knowledge.
JOHN MILTON GREGORY
The Seven Laws of Teaching
A teacher who loves learning earns the right and the ability to help others learn.
RUTH BEECHICK
An Easy Start in Arithmetic
What I've learned about teaching is to refer back to the root of that word, which is educo, which means "to pull from." Education does not mean jamming information into somebody's head. Rather, it's that ancient idea that all knowledge is within us; to teach is to help somebody pull it out of themselves.
ALAN ARKIN
Esquire, March 2007
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
JACQUES BARZUN
Newsweek, December 5, 1955
I learned that religious/spiritual teaching is a very powerful means of biased indoctrination that uses guilt and fear to squelch freedom of thought and open honest inquiry.
CARTER WARDEN
"Categorically Shedding Decades of Clergy Guilt", Patheos, June 15, 2017
In the rush to make teaching a science we mustn't forget the artistry and craft of the job.
SIMON SMITH
"Evidence is important, but great teaching is still an art", TES, May 12, 2017
The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.
ELBERT HUBBARD
A Thousand & One Epigrams
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
JOHN COTTON DANA
New York Times Book Review, March 5, 1967
No teaching is complete that does not issue in plain and intelligent expression of the truth taught; but it is the most miserable of mockeries when, in place of leading the child to perfect and put into its own simple speech its own simple conceptions of truth, we impose upon it the ready-made definitions of some learned master or teacher, dressed, for the most part, in words it never heard before.
JOHN MILTON GREGORY
The Seven Laws of Teaching
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music, Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Teaching is an art, not a science, principally because it involves human beings, their emotions and their values.
GILBERT HIGHET
The Art of Teaching
Teaching is a really special form of cooperative activity. Aristotle says that teaching only happens when the student is learning. That's because the teaching and learning happen in the same place, in the student, in the mind of another person.
AGNES CALLARD
"2017 Quantrell and Graduate Teaching Awards", UChicago News, June 5, 2017
There was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can't do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.
RANDY PAUSCH
The Last Lecture
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Pleasures of Life
All I can say to teachers, both indigenous and non-indigenous, is this: Our children need to learn about one another and about the world, even when the world is a difficult place. We need creative, thoughtful and kind people who are willing to take risks to teach all our children. Please don't be afraid to engage them. They need you.
DANIELLE S. MCLAUGHLIN
"What Is Appropriate And What Is Cultural Appropriation?", Huffington Post Canada, May 23, 2017
Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.
HAIM G. GINOTT
Young Children, vol. 51, 1964
A good teacher does not draw out; he gives out, and what he gives out is love.
A. S. NEILL
The Problem Teacher
In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.
PHIL COLLINS
"Son of Man", Tarzan
The teacher is a sympathizing guide whose familiarity with the subjects to be learned enables him to direct the learner's efforts, to save him from the waste of time and strength, or needless or insuperable difficulties, and to keep him from mistaking truth for error. But no aid of school or teacher can change nature's modes in mind work, or take from the learner the lordly prerogative and need for knowing for himself.
JOHN MILTON GREGORY
The Seven Laws of Teaching