quotations about teaching
Teaching is one of the noblest of professions. It requires an adequate preparation and training, patience, devotion, and a deep sense of responsibility. Those who mold the human mind have wrought not for time, but for eternity.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
speech, July 4, 1924
A teacher who loves learning earns the right and the ability to help others learn.
RUTH BEECHICK
An Easy Start in Arithmetic
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
JACQUES BARZUN
Newsweek, December 5, 1955
No man can instruct more than half-a-dozen students at once. The whole problem of education is one of its cost in money.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
Only crazy people teach in heels. You're on your feet all day. Sometimes you have to chase a kid. It's true that heels sound really impressive on the linoleum when you're walking down the hall, but how are you ever going to sneak up on anybody?
CAPTAIN AWESOME
"6 Ways in Which Teaching Is Nothing Like the Movies", We Are Teachers, December 4, 2015
The teacher does not have to be, although he has to know: he is the mind imagining, not the executant.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
The Essential Wyndham Lewis
First then, I lay down for a principle, that nobody at an University is to be taught the practice of any rule without the true and solid reason and demonstration of the same. Rules without demonstration must and ought to be taught to seamen, artisans, &c. as I have already said; and schools for such people are fit in seaports and trading towns; but it is far below the dignity of an University, which is designed for solid and true learning, to do this.
JOHN ARBUTHNOT
An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning
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
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
JOHN STEINBECK
"...like captured fireflies"
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
It's the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
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
Be versed in ancient lore, and familiarize yourself with the modern; then may you become teachers.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism ... the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young.
HENRY S. CANBY
Alma Mater
O ye! who teach the ingenious youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany or Spain,
I pray ye flog them upon all occasions,
It mends their morals, never mind the pain.
LORD BYRON
Don Juan
Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be!
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Electronic Tutors
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
The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.
BERTOLT BRECHT
Life of Galileo
You know what's adorable about inspirational teacher movies? The way they grade papers. When Robin Williams sits down in front of a stack of papers in Dead Poets Society, they're all neatly arranged and he's staring intently at one, pen poised, ready to help guide one of those good-looking boys down the road to self-discovery before jotting down a score in his leather-bound grade book. Look, maybe I'm just doing it wrong. But my grade book is a dog-eared old Squibbs--which I had to buy myself, since the school doesn't give those out anymore--that is so overflowing with student work it's about to attain consciousness and try to take over the world.
CAPTAIN AWESOME
"6 Ways in Which Teaching Is Nothing Like the Movies", We Are Teachers, December 4, 2015
Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles on a standardized test; we know that's not true.
BARACK OBAMA
National Education Association Speech, 2007