Quotes About Education

the more general problem of schools favoring memorized answers over creative questions is nothing new. Some point out that it's built into an educational system that was created in a different time, the Industrial Age, and for a different purpose.

When I used to take tests in college, I would be very anxious," he told me. "So I came up with a process whereby I would always answer the more obvious questions first. Then, as my anxiety would lessen, I'd start to answer more of the questions that required real thinking.

In some ways, Meier was trying to extend the kindergarten experience through all grades. Teaching kindergarten "was such an extraordinary intellectual experience, and I thought, Why couldn't we just keep doing that?" Only in kindergarten, she told me, "do we put up with kids asking questions that are off-topic.

Importantly, the professor was also "willing to ask questions without knowing the answer. Teachers and professors, we think our authority rests on having answers. But students find it really liberating to have a teacher say, 'I don't know the answer—so let's figure this out together.

We come out of the womb questioning," noted the small-schools-movement pioneer Deborah Meier.

In studying "master questioners," Hal Gregersen inquired about their childhoods and found that most had "at least one adult in their lives who encouraged them to ask provocative questions." The Nobel laureate scientist Isidor Isaac Rabi was one such child; when he came home from school, "while other mothers asked their kids 'Did you learn anything today?' [my mother ] would say, 'Izzy, did you ask a good question today?

Our grandfathers and great grandfathers18 built schools to train people to have a lifetime of productive labor as part of the industrialized economy. And it worked." To

If we're born to inquire, then why must it be taught?

What might the potential for humans be if we really encouraged that spirit of questioning in children, instead of closing it down? I

What would happen if this happens?' I do that on my own—I do all of my exploring outside of school. Because in school it's not allowed and that just . . . really sucks."   If

You don't learn unless you question.

Don't just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything." After

What if our schools could train students to be better lifelong learners and better adapters to change, by enabling them to be better questioners?

when he came home from school, "while other mothers asked their kids 'Did you learn anything today?' [my mother ] would say, 'Izzy, did you ask a good question today?

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves - and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.

Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it."

We must have a program to learn the way out of prison.

The problem? There has been no parallel effort to help our sons become multipurpose men. The female-only scholarships and affirmative action for our daughters to enter the STEM professions is not matched by the male-only scholarships and affirmative action for our sons to enter the "caring professions" -- elementary school teachers, social workers, nurses, dental hygienists, marriage and family therapists, or becoming a full-time dad.

even when race, education, income, and other socioeconomic factors are equal, living without dad doubled a child's chance of dropping out of high school.5

Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.

training is not knowledge and knowledge is not strength, but combine training with knowledge and then you

I don't learn so good, no matter how good the teacher is.

The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose children he instructed.