Quotes from Ted Sizer

A good education teaches you how to ask a question. It's knowing what you don't know; the skills of critical thought.

Things remain the same because it is impossible to change very much without changing most of everything.

The schools schedule is a series of units of time; the clock is king.

Education jargon is the language of pedants; it identifies those who have so little confidence in themselves and their work that they seek to create a veil of words to hide them.

the evidence is there. Thought control is, to a free people, a cardinal sin. It is dangerous because focused propaganda can be effective. This is why the best teachers insist on a broad range of learning, most especially including skepticism. We must teach our students to use caution when they are exposed to ideologies that have followers whose enthusiasm clouds their judgment.

To be useful, learning must have a worthy purpose and become a habit. A trip down this road starts with the questions "Why?" "How?" and "What?"—the major interrogatives in the English language. A wise person asks these questions virtually without thinking; a wise teacher guides his students to acquire the habit of asking them.

Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily.