The Whole Art of Teaching

Words!!! We would do well to ponder the wise words of wise men and women who came before us, to look upon their habits and philosophy and glean from their experiences.

That’ s why I love quotes so much…they’re like little nuggets of profound truth wrapped up and presevered in words for countless ages. That’s why I love words, in fact! I hope you will not only read the quotes below, but think about the truth in each one, allowing it to weave itself into the fabric of your life.

More inspiration for your educational journey!

Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labour, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

Dean William R. Inge
The aim of education is the knowledge not of fact, but of values.

Anatole France
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards

Thomas H. Huxley
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever or whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.


William Butler Yeats:
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

Eleanor Roosevelt
I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Alvin Toffler:
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Beatrix Potter
Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.

Bill Beattie:
The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think – rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.

Edith Hamilton:
To be able to be caught up into the world of thought — that is to be educated.

Finley Peter Dunne:
Ye can lead a man up to the university, but you can’t make him think.

Marian Wright Edelman:
Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.

Rachel Carson:
If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

I’m off to the babbling creek behind our house to read Paradise Lost to my children…I’ll be gone awhile!