Quotes by Educators - Page 16

Children need time to become themselves--through play and social interaction. If you overwhelm a child with stuff--with choices and pseudochoices--before they are ready, they will only know one emotional gesture: More!

Came the Spring with all its splendor All its birds and all its blossoms All its flowers and leaves and grasses.

It's like smoking compost through a raccoon.

Optimists enrich the present, enhance the future,challenge the improbable and attain the impossible

When I want your opinion I'll give it to you.

Find comfort in little things and joy in unexpected moments.

Besides Zeus on his throne, Justice has her seat.

You gotta admit, it's a messed-up world when going to war is safer than staying home.

. . . we are all giving our lives away--the only question is, to what? We spend ourselves on television, money, power, sex, leisure, adventure, and fame. They are a bad investment. If we look for life by spending ourselves here, we look in vain.

Call it dysphoric mania, agitated depression, or a mixed state: nobody will understand anyway. Mania and depression at once mean the will to die and the motivation to make it happen. This is why mixed states are the most dangerous periods of mood disorders. Tearfulness and racing thoughts happen. So do agitation and guilt, fatigue and morbidity and dread. Walking late at night, trying to get murdered, happens. Trying to explain a bipolar mixed state is like trying to explain the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God: you just have to take it on faith when I tell you that the poles bend, cross, never snapping.

Stars crown the world, she said, but the lights in your eyes, those are stars, too. They make up your crown, he said.

Stop thinking of yourself as a victim. You were a target that is now no longer being hit.

As I became older, I was given many masks to wear. I could be a laborer laying railroad tracks across the continent, with long hair in a queue to be pulled by pranksters; a gardener trimming the shrubs while secretly planting a bomb; a saboteur before the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor, signaling the Imperial Fleet; a kamikaze pilot donning his headband somberly, screaming 'Banzai' on my way to my death; a peasant with a broad-brimmed straw hat in a rice paddy on the other side of the world, stooped over to toil in the water; an obedient servant in the parlor, a houseboy too dignified for my own good; a washerman in the basement laundry, removing stains using an ancient secret; a tyrant intent on imposing my despotism on the democratic world, opposed by the free and the brave; a party cadre alongside many others, all of us clad in coordinated Mao jackets; a sniper camouflaged in the trees of the jungle, training my gunsights on G.I. Joe; a child running with a body burning from napalm, captured in an unforgettable photo; an enemy shot in the head or slaughtered by the villageful; one of the grooms in a mass wedding of couples, having met my mate the day before through our cult leader; an orphan in the last airlift out of a collapsed capital, ready to be adopted into the good life; a black belt martial artist breaking cinderblocks with his head, in an advertisement for Ginsu brand knives with the slogan 'but wait--there's more' as the commercial segued to show another free gift; a chef serving up dog stew, a trick on the unsuspecting diner; a bad driver swerving into the next lane, exactly as could be expected; a horny exchange student here for a year, eager to date the blonde cheerleader; a tourist visiting, clicking away with his camera, posing my family in front of the monuments and statues; a ping pong champion, wearing white tube socks pulled up too high and batting the ball with a wicked spin; a violin prodigy impressing the audience at Carnegie Hall, before taking a polite bow; a teen computer scientist, ready to make millions on an initial public offering before the company stock crashes; a gangster in sunglasses and a tight suit, embroiled in a turf war with the Sicilian mob; an urban greengrocer selling lunch by the pound, rudely returning change over the counter to the black patrons; a businessman with a briefcase of cash bribing a congressman, a corrupting influence on the electoral process; a salaryman on my way to work, crammed into the commuter train and loyal to the company; a shady doctor, trained in a foreign tradition with anatomical diagrams of the human body mapping the flow of life energy through a multitude of colored points; a calculus graduate student with thick glasses and a bad haircut, serving as a teaching assistant with an incomprehensible accent, scribbling on the chalkboard; an automobile enthusiast who customizes an imported car with a supercharged engine and Japanese decals in the rear window, cruising the boulevard looking for a drag race; a illegal alien crowded into the cargo hold of a smuggler's ship, defying death only to crowd into a New York City tenement and work as a slave in a sweatshop.My mother and my girl cousins were Madame Butterfly from the mail order bride catalog, dying in their service to the masculinity of the West, and the dragon lady in a kimono, taking vengeance for her sisters. They became the television newscaster, look-alikes with their flawlessly permed hair.Through these indelible images, I grew up. But when I looked in the mirror, I could not believe my own reflection because it was not like what I saw around me. Over the years, the world opened up. It has become a dizzying kaleidoscope of cultural fragments, arranged and rearranged without plan or order.

Your ego is laughing at you behind your back.

All beings are made up of LifeParticles, and ceaselessly interact and communicate on this deeper level of reality. Through this connection, all beings affect and reflect each other. Whatever we do, we do to ourselves. Whatever comes out of us comes back.

People respond to gentle words than scolding

The story writes you as much as you write it. And the process of re-writing isn't so much a quest to re-write the story as it is to re-write the writer.

Conscience is the manifestation of our divine nature, the absolute truthfulness that we all have inside, that resides beyond the instinctive desire to survive.

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education all politics can do is keep us out of war.

When peace has thoroughly permeated our brain, mind, and body, we can create it as our reality. I firmly believe that every person is a peacemaker, once thy have developed their self-awareness and creativity. Peace must not be left to government leaders or gurus. It must spring from the brains, hands, and minds of the people.

...tell them that we have some good in us, too. And the only thing worth living for is the good. That’s why we’ve got to make sure we pass it on.

You can always tell a real friend when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.

I plunged into the job of creating something from nothing. ... Though I hadn't a penny left I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a living God faith in myself and a desire to serve.

I'm as proud of my inconsistencies as I am my consistencies.

If wrinkles must be written upon our brows let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old.

Helping people to know God and to be obedient to him is perhaps the greatest gift we can bestow. Understood in this way, Christian education can be be one of the most compassionate ministries of the church.

I'm not as interested in dispensing knowledge on how to make a living ass I am in helping young people learn how to make a life...

When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain 'gnosis'--had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ...So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes.

Earnestness and sincereness are synonymous.

Just as novice musicians must spend many hours practicing basic skills like playing scales or mastering difficult passages--and frequently do so in the presence of their teacher, receiving immediate and individualized feedback--so must our students spend many hours practicing the basic intellectual skills of our discipline.

Don’t ever try to leave me again.

Note how good you feel after you have encouraged someone else. No other argument is necessary to suggest that never miss the opportunity to give encouragement.

A degenerate nobleman or one that is proud of his birth is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground.

Once on yellow sheet of paper with green lines, he wrote a poemand he called it “Spot”because that was the name of his dog and that’s what it was all aboutand his teacher gave him an “A” and a big gold starand his mother hung it on the kitchen cupboard and showed it to his auntand that was the year his sister was born-and his parents kissed all the timeand the little girl around the corner sent him a postcard with a row of X’s on itand his father tucked him into bed at night and was always there.Then on a white sheet of paper with blue lines, he wrote another poemand he called it “Autumn”because that was the time of year and that’s what it was all aboutand his teacher gave him an “A” and told him to write more clearlyand his mother told him not to hang it on the kitchen cupboard because it left marksand that was the year his sister got glasses and his parents never kissed anymoreand the little girl around the corner laughed when he fell down with his bikeand his father didn’t tuck him in at night.So, on another piece of paper torn from a notebook he wrote another poemand he called it “Absolutely Nothing”Because that’s what it was all aboutand his teach gave him an “A” and a hard searching lookand he didn’t show it to his motherand that was the year he caught his sister necking on the back porchand the little girl around the corner wore too much make-up so that he laughed when he kissed herbut he kissed her anywayand he tucked himself in bed at three AM with his father snoring loudly in the next roomFinally, on the inside of a matchbook he wrote another poemand he called it “?” because that’s what it was all aboutAnd he gave himself an “A” and a slash on each wrist and hung it on the bathroom mirrorBecause he couldn’t make it to the kitchen.

Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour.

The question of the position of man, as an animal, has given rise to much disputation, with the result of proving that there is no anatomical or developmental character by which he is more widely distinguished from the group of animals most nearly allied to him, than they are from one another.

His power sings to your blood. I witnessed your reaction to him just now. He’ll be a king in a few years... And you’ll be his queen.

If Ever You Feel Down, Remember, 100Trillion Cells Make Up Your Body and ALL each of them cares About is You.Our body is made up of about100,000 Billions of cells (100 Trillion)... all living working and sacrificing themselves completely for the exclusive benefit, well-being, and survival of the whole (which is you). We are each of us a universe unto ourselves.To put 100 Trillion in perspective...Jeremy Harper counted from one to one million in about 3 months. He did NOTHING but count, eat, and sleep (minimal). During this time; he didn't leave his home nor even shave. And that's only one MILLION, so if you ignore the fact that pronunciation takes much, much longer on ever larger numbers (more than a minute each), counting to 100 Trillion would take more than 25 Million years.It's awe inspiring to think that 100 Trillion cells (worlds) are counting ON me also, my decisions determine (to a large degree) whether they are allowed to continue living and experiencing in this life or not.Knowing all of this, who could realistically say that there are no miracles. We each have over 100 Trillion miracles working FOR us and depending ON us each and every second of every day.So when praying, I must always keep in mind that each word is in behalf of 100 Trillion worlds.OUR Father Who Art in Heaven...

We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware – beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

Then as Anna listened another sound began to rise within the first. It began as a low keening, like the wind in a bottle tree, almost indiscernible amid the guns. Yet it was there, and it grew and grew, gaining strength and timbre until suddenly a new note broke away and was taken up: a high weird quavering like nothing that Anna had ever heard, that peopled the smoke with an army of mourning phantoms. Anna had heard the men talk of this, too—the uncanny demon cry of the Rebel army going into the attack—and now here it was for real, echoing across violence and death for the last time in a wild crescendo that seemed to peak and yet peak again: descanting blood, crying lost youth and the loss of all dreams. One last time it shrilled out of the rolling smoke, then collapsed all at once into a maelstrom of voices—the deep snarling utterance of thousands of men in hell.

There is a belief advanced today, and in some cases by conservative black authors, that poor children and particularly black children should not be allowed to hear too much about these matters. If they learn how much less they are getting than rich children, we are told, this knowledge may induce them to regard themselves as "victims," and such "victim-thinking," it is argued, may then undermine their capacity to profit from whatever opportunities may actually exist. But this is a matter of psychology-or strategy-and not reality. The matter, in any case, is academic since most adolescents in the poorest neighborhoods learn very soon that they are getting less than children in the wealthier school districts. They see suburban schools on television and they see them when they travel for athletic competitions. It is a waste of time to worry whether we should tell them something they could tell to us. About injustice, most poor children in American cannot be fooled.

It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life.

As Unto the bow the the cord is ,So unto the man is woman;Though she bends him, she obeys him,Though she draws him , yet she follows:Useless each without the other.

What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn't a school at all.

When children are very young, they have natural curiosities about the world and explore them, trying diligently to figure out what is real. As they become "producers " they fall away from exploration and start fishing for the right answers with little thought. They believe they must always be right, so they quickly forget mistakes and how these mistakes were made. They believe that the only good response from the teacher is "yes," and that a "no" is defeat.

Give what you have. To someone else it may be better than you dare to think.

No one would speak, so Terence took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, "My liege?""Yes, Terence?""Twenty years ago I decided I would die for you. I may not be able to do that tomorrow, but if I can't, I can at least die beside you.

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.

Newspapers have developed what might be called a vested interest in catastrophe. If they can spot a fight they play up that fight. If they can uncover a tragedy they will headline that tragedy.

Feeling old? Remember, you will never again be as young as your are today.

He felt a deep urge to put some order in this chaos. Leaning against a large standing-stone by the wayside, he drew out his dreambook and began to write.

American musicians, instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But that has always been the course of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the 'people' like is poohpoohed; whatever is 'popular' is spoken of as not worth the while. The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.

What do teachers and curriculum directors mean by 'value' reading? A look at the practice of most schools suggests that when a school 'values' reading what it really means is that the school intensely focuses on raising state-mandated reading test scores- the kind of reading our students will rarely, if ever, do in adulthood.

Make a commitment to serve the needs of the ‘least of these’ and give voice to the voiceless.

Education is fundamentally religious. Consequently, there is no question about whether a morality will be imposed in that education, but rather which morality will be imposed.

Attention has its most powerful expression in purposeful action.

The immature mind hops from one thing to another the mature mind seeks to follow through.

Lost yesterday somewhere between sunrise and sunset two golden hours each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever.

History was once rewritten by the victors. Now we write our own immutable histories with every email, text, and post.

Every arrow that flies feels the pull of the earth.