Quotes About Education

Don't squander precious ignorance by researching it away.

what I want to say is that it doesn't matter what particular style of nonsense infects the child brain. Once infected, the child will grow up and infect the next generation with the same nonsense, whatever it happens to be.

Michael Shermer, in How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, describes a large survey of randomly chosen Americans that he and his colleague Frank Sulloway carried out. Among their many interesting results was the discovery that religiosity is indeed negatively correlated with education (more highly educated people are less likely to be religious). Religiosity is also negatively correlated with interest in science and (strongly) with political liberalism

A professorship of theology should have no place in our institution.

Those who control what young people are taught, and what they experience – what they see, hear, think, and believe – will determine the future course for the nation.

giving children something with which to surprise their parents is one of the greatest gifts a teacher can bestow.

If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers. Suicide bombers do what they do because they really believe what they were taught in their religious schools: that duty to God exceeds all other priorities, and that martyrdom in his service will be rewarded in the gardens of Paradise.

There he coined the acronym NOMA for the phrase 'non-overlapping magisteria':

Just think what the ordeal must be like for less intellectually robust people, less equipped by education and rhetorical skill than they are, or than Julia Sweeney is, to argue their corner in the face of obdurate family members.

but I suspect that for many people the main reason they cling to religion is not that it is consoling, but that they have been let down by our educational system and don't realize that non-belief is even an option.

A professorship of theology should have no place in our institution. —THOMAS JEFFERSON

obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity.

It is the joy of true education: of reading for the sake of a wonderful book rather than for an exam; of following up a subject because it is fascinating rather than because it is on a syllabus; of watching a great teacher's eyes light up for sheer love of the subject.

45 per cent of the population of the United States firmly believes, to the contrary, an elementary falsehood: that all species separately owe their existence to 'intelligent design' less than ten thousand years ago.

I simply would not accede to being forced into this, and would frequently be kept out of classes because of irreverent comments and mocking this religious stuff. Frankly, it stayed with me to this day. In fact, don't get me going. I'm almost as bad as Richard Dawkins on this issue.

The Crusades, waged intermittently from 1095 to 1291, but which continued in waves for centuries after that, were military campaigns sanctioned principally by the Roman Catholic Church to reclaim the Holy Land. American students barely learn about the Crusades, but they are essential to understanding the wars of the last decade.

When I was growing up here, slavery was hardly ever mentioned," said Regina. "Or people would say that the slaves were happy and well looked after, and the Civil War was about states' rights and honor. You still hear that, of course, but we are finally making some progress. The best thing we can do about our awful history is to acknowledge it openly and honestly.

The people in charge blame the whites, blame the parents, blame the teachers, blame the students, and now they're blaming the buildings. The facilities are run-down because they haven't maintained them properly. They say there's no money for maintenance, but they spend a fortune on hiring consultant after consultant. Oh my God, so many consultants when we didn't have any textbooks or paper.

F-rated Natchez High, with 700 students, had four principals and four assistant principals, all making between $50,000 and $82,000 a year plus benefits. By contrast, the A-rated public high school in Tupelo, Mississippi, with 2,100 students, had just one principal, working with one assistant principal.

Any white person who doesn't care about the public schools is a fool. The whole future of this town depends on fixing the public schools, so we can stop our population decline and attract new families and businesses. If we can't fix the schools, I'm afraid we're going to lose the town.

While motivation can play a significant role in teens' behavior, it's important to recognize that some behaviors reflect a skill weakness rather than a lack of motivation.

Psychologists tell us that in order to learn from experience, two ingredients are necessary: frequent practice and immediate feedback.

It is not easy to become an educated person.

This brings us to one of the most poignant aspects of the intellectual's position. Anti-intellectualism, as I hope these pages have made clear, is founded in the democratic institutions and the egalitarian sentiments of this country. The intellectual class, whether or not it enjoys many of the privileges of an elite, is of necessity an elite in its manner of thinking and functioning.