Quotations

From Barry Boyce, A Real Education, “’Kindness, caring, empathy, being able to de-center from your own point of view and listen deeply to others—these are values that should be cultivated in our classrooms,’ says Mark Greenberg, director of the Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development at Penn State University. These are the social and emotional skills that a person who experienced ‘optimal nurturing conditions’ would develop during childhood and adolescence and bring with them into adulthood.”

From John Taylor Gatto, Against School, “…if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight - simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.” and “Now for the good news. Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.”

From Keith Gilyard, Children, Arts, and Du Bois, “But solid, practical reasons exist to resist the trend.  Again I think, ironically of Du Bois.  In 1891, while still a student at Harvard University, he delivered an address before the National Colored League in Boston in which he cleverly addresses the popular notion that practical or manual training was the most suitable course for Black students by providing numerous examples of the practical benefits of liberal thinking.  The effect of all true education, offered by Du Bois is ‘not only a gaining of some practical means of helping present life, but the making of present life mean more that it meant before…’”

From bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking, “The most exciting aspect of critical thinking in the classroom is that it calls for initiative from everyone, actively inviting all students to think passionately and to share ideas in a passionate, open matter.  When everyone in the classroom, teacher and students, recognizes that they are responsible for creating a learning community together, learning is at its most meaningful and useful.  In such a community of learning there is no failure.  Everyone is participating and sharing whatever resource is needed at a given moment in time to ensure that we leave the classroom knowing that critical thinking empowers us.”

From Jerry Large, Gift of grit, curiosity help kids succeed, “Grit is one of the characteristics of successful people. Here's a list of the others: self-control, zest, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity. The presence or absence of those qualities is a better indicator of future success than test scores or IQ.”

From Mike Rose, The Answer Sheet: Mike Roses’s Resolutions on Education, “14) I’m going to end by repeating my initial resolution in case the universe missed it the first time around: That through whatever combination of factors – from policy initiatives to individual effort – more young people get an engaging and challenging education in 2011.”