Quotes About Teaching

Anyone untaught can do a wrong thing. But after he's been taught, there's no excuse to repeat it.

That is half of teaching an apprentice: making sure the youngster learns what you said, not what she thinks you said.

Children are not born with memories of who insulted their mother or slew their grandfather or stole their land. Those hates are bequeathed to them, taught them, breathed into them. If adults didn't tell children of their hereditary hates, perhaps we would do better.

And I had gone along with such a crooked piece of logic. Why? Did either of us believe that teaching children might be easier than killing them?

Learning is never wrong. Even learning how to kill isn't wrong. Or right. It's just a thing to learn, a thing I can teach you.

The problem is not that we forget the past. It is that we recall it too well. Children recall wrongs that enemies did to their grandfathers, and blame the granddaughters of the old enemies. Children are not born with memories of who insulted their mother or slew their grandfather or stole their land. Those hates are bequeathed to them, taught them, breathed into them. If adults didn't tell children of their hereditary hates, perhaps we would do better.

once students have been taught that learning is tedious, difficult, and useless, they will never learn another lesson.

Very little worth knowing is taught by fear," Burrich said stubbornly. And, more warmly: "It's a poor teacher who tries to instruct by blows and threats. Imagine taming a horse that way. Or a dog. Even the most knot-headed dog learns better from an open hand than a stick.

Never regret your past. Rather, embrace it as the teacher that it is.

The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness.

Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion---until we teach them not to.

They live both above and below ground, joining Skyworld to the earth. Plants know how to make food from light and water, and then they give it away. I like to imagine that when Skywoman scattered her handful of seeds across Turtle Island, she was sowing sustenance for the body and also for the mind, emotion, and spirit: she was leaving us teachers. The plants can tell us her story; we need to learn to listen.

Imagine raising children in a culture in which gratitude is the first priority.

How do we show our children our love? Each in our own way by a shower of gifts and a heavy rain of lessons.

Being a good mother means teaching your children to care for the world

The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness. Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.

Children hearing the Skywoman story from birth know in their bones the responsibility that flows between humans and the earth.

toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion—until we teach them not to.

Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion -- until we teach them not to. We quickly retrain them and make them forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation.

We may forget the teacher, but our language remembers: our word for the giveaway, minidewak, means "they give from the heart.

I hope I am also teaching them to know the world as a neighborhood of nonhuman residents

Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion—until we teach them not to. We quickly retrain them and make them forget.

I like to imagine that when Skywoman scattered her handful of seeds across Turtle Island, she was sowing sustenance for the body and also for the mind, emotion, and spirit: she was leaving us teachers. The plants can tell us her story; we need to learn to listen.

humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn - we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance