I discovered I’m in Illinois Loop’s Education Quotes along with Mark Twain, Charlemagne and Kermit the Frog. My favorite is this:
“The problem with many youngsters today is not that they don’t have opinions but that they don’t have the facts on which to base their opinions.”
– Albert Shanker, late former president of the American Federation of Teachers, (“Debating the Standards”, New York Times, Jan. 29, 1995)
I like this one too:
“No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest”
– T.S. Eliot
There are lots of good quotes here — so good the NEA’s web site lifted a whole bunch, without attribution.
Great list — thanks for sharing! Two that struck a chord with me:
“Excellence is achieved by the mastery of fundamentals.”
– Vince Lombardi
“Information is the currency of democracy.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest”
– T.S. Eliot
“Some people like to say that children are innately curious and that they’ll construct knowledge for themselves. To an extent, that’s true; children are innately interested in socialization and sex, for instance. But that doesn’t mean they are innately interested in history and math. These things have to be taught…”
– Cognitive psychologist David Geary, University of Missouri
I was innately interested in history and math, and dozens of other arcane subjects, at a very early age. Eliot and Geary are speaking only of dumbed-down normal bimbos, not mutants such as myself. The educational implications speak for themselves.
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
– Mark Twain (unauthenticated)
“Some people like to say that children are innately curious and that they’ll construct knowledge for themselves. To an extent, that’s true; children are innately interested in socialization and sex, for instance. But that doesn’t mean they are innately interested in history and math. These things have to be taught…”
Whether children are innately curious about sex and/or history doesn’t address a key puzzle: how do you go about constructing your own knowledge? Do progressive/constructivist educationists really believe one can “construct one’s own knowledge” ex nihilo? A subject like history, in particular, is the result of laborious scholarship. That means that at some point pupils would have to read books. Hands-on activities, endless coloring, cutting and pasting, arts and crafts — the obsession of educationists — is no substitute for reading books.
Whether children are innately curious about sex and/or history doesn’t address a key puzzle: how do you go about constructing your own knowledge?
Nobody knows the answer to that. Philosophers have speculated, but it’s up to competent cognitive psychologists and neurologists to find the answer.
Do progressive/constructivist educationists really believe one can “construct one’s own knowledge” ex nihilo?
If they really believed that, fully and completely, they would be putting themselves out of work.
But everyone does “construct their own knowledge” on their own, even in trivial matters. Babies explore their world on their own, and make some sort of sense of it. Certain exceptional individuals, such as Edison, have done so for academic studies as well.
A subject like history, in particular, is the result of laborious scholarship. That means that at some point pupils would have to read books. Hands-on activities, endless coloring, cutting and pasting, arts and crafts — the obsession of educationists — is no substitute for reading books.
I was not denying that, or the need for qualified professional teachers, instructors, and mentors.
There are both Edisons and troglodytes in the general population. I objected to Geary implying that all kids are trogs, and needed to be treated as such. When that happens, it is a crime against those brilliant few closer to Edison in mentality.
But everyone does “construct their own knowledge” on their own, even in trivial matters. Babies explore their world on their own, and make some sort of sense of it. Certain exceptional individuals, such as Edison, have done so for academic studies as well.
People assimilate knowledge, but there has to be external input. They don’t create all knowledge from scratch. The constructivists fall prey to the ambiguity of “construction”, i.e. assimilation vs. creating knowledge from scratch. Your example of babies is telling. I have always said that constructivists are stuck in the sensorimotor — at best the pre-operational — stage. This then becomes the source of endless educational nonsense.
Even Edison had external input. Edison had a voracious appetite for knowledge and devoured books from the library.
To “instructivist”:
All I can say, from my not-inconsiderable experience with both constructivists and instructivists, is that both sides are guilty of assuming that every single person fits their world-view. Some of us don’t.
One side wants to treat children as dumb meatheads who can only learn by arts & crafts, and beating up each other in the playground. The other side wants to treat children as meatheads who need to be strapped in their chairs for six hours of rote learning. What happens to the non-meatheads?