Quotes About Education

As a boy, I'd always had an interest in theater. But the idea at my school was that drama and music were to round out the man. It wasn't what one did for a living. I got over that.

Both my parents are English and came out to Australia in 1967. I was born the following year. My parents, and immigrants like them, were known as '&pound10 poms.' Back then, the Australian government was trying to get educated British people and Canadians - to be honest, educated white people - to come and live in Australia.

My father is a real idealist, and he's all about learning. If I asked for a pair of Nikes growing up, it was just a resounding 'No.' But if I asked for a saxophone, one would appear and next day and I'd be signed up for lessons. So anything to do with education or learning, my father would spare no expense.

The question is, will we continue to fight what may be a rearguard action to defend universal literacy as a central goal of our education system, or are we bold enough to see what's actually happening to our culture?

Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the 'creative bug' is just a wee voice telling you, 'I'd like my crayons back, please.

Being self-taught is no disgrace; but being self-certified is another matter.

The gas-law of learning: . . . any amount of information no matter how small will fill any intellectual void no matter how large.

In that atmosphere, false information flourishes; and subjects in tests are "eager to listen to and believe any sort of preposterous nonsense."16

Whatever the reason, the fact is that there was no widespread catechetical teaching for Christian children. Things were going to change. The growing awareness of the need for Christian education was one of the chief forces behind the desire in the sixteenth century to reform the rite of baptism.

I was sent to a teacher called Alf Adamson, who had a country dance band that toured the Borders.

Contrary to what Pakistani children are taught in schools, the Islamic ideology currently in vogue in Pakistan did not give birth to the country; it was born after Pakistan's creation in its present form.

The military is Pakistan's only institution inherited from the British Raj that has proved resilient and effective. 'As the history of law, democracy, administration and education in Pakistan demonstrates, other British institutions in what is now Pakistan (and to a lesser extent India as well) failed to take root, failed to work, or have been transformed in ways that their authors would scarcely have recognized.

Pakistan has gone on to try and define by law who is or is not a Muslim, adopted (and abandoned) interest-free banking, considered segregation of the sexes in public, and endeavoured to implement sharia. The quality of education in Pakistan has declined as a result of attempts to comply with clerical demands.

National pride should not deter Pakistanis from confronting the fact that education has not been their national priority the same way as, say, acquiring nuclear weapons.

The number of clerics has also increased exponentially. At Independence in 1947, there were only 137 madrasas (Islamic seminaries) in Pakistan. Nine years later, a 1956 survey reported that the number of madrasas had increased to 244 in West Pakistan. By 1995, the ministry of education estimated the figure at 3,906, which increased to 7,000 in 2000 and 35,000 by 2016.

As of 2014, Pakistan is home to the third largest illiterate population globally and there are only fifteen countries in the world with a lower literacy rate than Pakistan. 34

The average Pakistani student is brought up on a mix of dogma and mythology that does not encourage respect for facts or empiricism.

There are forty-three countries in the world that are poorer than Pakistan on a per capita GDP basis45 but twenty-four of them send more children to primary school than Pakistan does.

Jenabai knew how much it must have cost Mastan to admit his helplessness in resolving the issue. He was always conscious of his public image—perhaps because he was defensive about his lack of education—and hated to appear anything but wise.

Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.

It is necessary for us to learn from others' mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself.

Uneducated citizens are potentially as dangerous to the proper functioning of our democratic institutions as are uneducated workers when they handle complicated machinery.

Through concentrating on a specialty too early in life, a man becomes a kind of useful machine, but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding for, and a lively feeling for values. Otherwise, with his specialized knowledge, he more closely resembles a well-trained

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.