Quotes About Education

No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.

Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence;… to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects.

The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.

One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.

language is never neutral

The educator has the duty of not being neutral.

Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.

No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).

Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence.

We who teach are not meant to search for faults but for possibilities.

Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside needs woman.

I am always glad when any of my books can be put into an inexpensive edition, because I like to think that any people who might wish to read them can do so. Surely books ought to be within reach of everybody.

In his pioneering research on moral development in children, Lawrence Kohlberg argued that teaching students to obey rules in order to avoid punishment was far less effective than helping students to develop the ability to make reasoned ethical judgments about their behavior. Rather than punishing students by sending them home for fighting, educators should teach students how to resolve conflicts peacefully; discipline should always teach a moral lesson.

There must be a complete interrogation of the thinking that has allowed such practices to operate without challenge...

I was younger, smarter, better educated than she, and I began to realize that she was afraid of me and the truths I told. By the

Seeing persistence as the key to success is also democratic. If hanging in there is what's required, then all the other characteristics and advantages one person might have over another—education, class, privilege—are taken off the table.

Kelli Farrell talks about the difference between girls and boys who struggle to get through high school: "Girls, especially those whose moms are head of household, get the message that men come and go, that they're going to have to take care of themselves and their kids. They're ready for the opportunity to step up. By the last year or two in high school, many boys have already steeled themselves for failure. They've checked out intellectually, mentally, and emotionally.

Read good, big important things.

Young people are not tabulae rasae. They have a sense of right and wrong. But if they're repeatedly exposed to certain themes, they are more likely to pick them up, to internalize them and have them become part of their sexual scripts.

Understanding makes the mind lazy.

For a small child there is no division between playing and learning between the things he or she does just for fun and things that are educational. The child learns while living and any part of living that is enjoyable is also play.

Perhaps there is always something in our head that is ready to learn.

Teenagers want to read - if we let them.

A book isn't rigorous if students aren't reading it.