quotations about teaching
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
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"
Life is amazing: and the teacher had better prepare himself to be a medium for that amazement.
EDWARD BLISHEN
Donkey Work
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
No man is so learned but he may be taught; neither is any one so illiterate but he may teach.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
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
Reflecting on my past teaching mistakes has made me more reflective about who I am. Sure, part of teaching is a performance, pretending to be in a better mood than I am some days, being patient even when I face personal struggles. But the real work of teaching involves making the world, and myself, knowable to students.
BENJAMIN DOXTDATOR
"My First-Nations Identity Feels More Like An Absence", NPR, May 30, 2017
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
JACQUES BARZUN
Newsweek, December 5, 1955
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
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Motto for the astronomy building of Junior College, Pasadena, California
It's the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
Teaching is the systematic inculcation of knowledge.
JOHN MILTON GREGORY
The Seven Laws of Teaching
The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.
BERTOLT BRECHT
Life of Galileo
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
JOHN COTTON DANA
New York Times Book Review, March 5, 1967
A good teacher does not draw out; he gives out, and what he gives out is love.
A. S. NEILL
The Problem Teacher
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
"Hartley Coleridge", Literary Studies
Deciding to teach is an indication you are interested in joining an engaging, worthwhile, and yet challenging profession. It is important to recognize that schools are a microcosm of society. Just as society has changed (i.e., technological advancements) and become more diverse, so too have schools, and they may be quite different from what you recall as a student.
GLADIS KERSAINT & DENISSE R. THOMPSON
"Advice on Making a Mid-Career Change to Teaching", Education Week, June 13, 2017
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
It is always the teacher who must learn the most ... or else nothing real has happened in the exchange.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
The Years of Rice and Salt
We love the precepts for the teacher's sake.
GEORGE FARQUHAR
The Constant Couple