Quotes About Teaching

If the members of a class do not understand -- if those directly addressed fail to listen, or listening, fail to recognize a power in the voice -- surely the fault lies with the speaker, who, having attempted to secure their attention and enlighten their understandings, has failed in the attempt.

God lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

The Old Testament contains fabulous elements. The New Testament consists mostly of teaching, not of narrative at all: but where it is narrative, it is, in my opinion, historical. As to the fabulous element in the Old Testament, I very much doubt if you would be wise to chuck it out.

"Tut, tut, child," said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral if only you can find it."

"We called him Tortoise because he taught us," said the Mock Turtle angrily. "Really you are very dull!"

Everything has got a moral if you can only find it.

Loving underlies effective learning: indeed, it is the basis of all cultural transference and interchange. No teaching machine can supply this.

As I get older, I have a very strong urge to know about stuff. I want to learn the names of trees and birds; that's the sort of knowledge I want to pass on to my son.

I'm afraid I have an incurable urge for teaching.

The most urgent task of any college is the transmission of knowledge, pure and simple.

The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.

I teach at USC, and it's obvious to anyone who teaches college students that they don't cover much modern history and certainly not the modern presidency.

Parents must lead by example. Don't use the cliche; do as I say and not as I do. We are our children's first and most important role models.

Everything that we used to think got taught at home now seemingly has to be taught in the public school system, and something is going to get lost in the process.

When I taught, the way in which we got evaluated is what I used to call the drive-by evaluation. Somebody would come in for 20 minutes with a checklist, and that would be your evaluation. So it was clearly a snapshot.

My dad had this old truck that he used to take on back roads and showed me how to drive when I was nine or ten.

The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize 'inconvenient' facts - I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party opinions.

Young children need to develop good habits that will be useful to them the rest of their lives. It is important to keep the lessons age-appropriate. For example, when your children start earning allowances, that would be a good time to teach them how to put some money in the bank instead of spending it all.

Any place that anyone can learn something useful from someone with experience is an educational institution.

When he first started - Jim Henson, who created Bid Bird and Oscar - he said Big Bird was just a big, goofy guy. And it was - a script came along and I said, 'I think Big Bird would be much more useful to the show if he were a child learning all the things we were teaching in the show.' And so he didn't know the alphabet, even, for instance.

In my work as a historian and in my relationships as a friend, teacher, wife, and mother, I have come to think that the most useful way to understand the past and make it work for you is to look at the trade-offs and contradictions that, however deeply buried, can be uncovered in every memory, good or bad.

With every coach you work with, you learn something. Then, at the end of your career, when you become a trainer, you take something from every coach that you think is useful for you.

I know how to cane chairs - how's that for a useless skill? My mom once took a course and taught me how to do it when I was stuck at home sick with the flu. Now I'm all set if I ever decide to drop out of fashion and join an Amish community.