Quotes: Education.

The idea in bold-face print is a summary of the quote. the number after the topic is the page on which the quote was found.

Education
Education 1437 Education in the Middle Ages vs. education today. "…how to play upon the harp, and how to cure diseases, and how to use the sword and shield, together with various other branches of education, in which the lads of those days used to be instructed, instead of writing and arithmetic." “The Golden Fleece” Hawthorne, Tanglewood Tales

Education 818 Lectures make learning easy. [Lectures]: "...thought and study are done to every person’s hand, without his putting himself to the slightest inconvenience in the matter." Hawthorne: “The Celestial Rail-Road”

Education 835 Nature and the outdoors vs. the prison of the schoolroom. "Daffydowndilly was delighted with the sweet smell of the new-mown grass, and thought how much pleasanter it must be to make hay in the sunshine, under the blue sky, and with the birds singing sweetly in the neighboring trees and bushes, than to be shut up in a dismal schoolroom learning lessons all day long, and continually scolded by old Mr. Toil…." Hawthorne: “Little Daffydowndilly”

Education 269 "We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our schoolmasters, and one from the world; the third contradicts all that the first two teach us." Montesquieu. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Education 89 Education consists of incompetent teachers teaching what cannot be understood to students who couldn't care less about what they are being taught. "Education: The inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent." John Maynard Keynes. Portable Curmudgeon.

Education 89 The wise use education to learn what they do not know; the foolish use education to flaunt what they do not understand. "Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." Ambrose Bierce. Portable Curmudgeon.

Education 112 You learn a subject best through teaching it. "To learn through teaching." Latin. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Education 143 One can learn from everybody. "It is allowable to learn even from an enemy." Ovid. Latin. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Education 286 Learn from what hurts. "Things which injure instruct." Latin. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Education 239 The highest aim in education is not to achieve results, but to develop the ability to achieve results and not solutions but how to achieve many different types of solutions. "It has been well said that the highest aim in education is analogous to the highest aim in mathematics, namely to obtain not results but powers, not particular solutions, but the means by which endless solutions may be wrought." George Eliot, “Thomas Carlyle.” 1855. Gross, ed. Essays.

Education 287 PhD's are only advertisements for universities. "...the PhD degree is in point of fact already looked upon as a mere advertising resource [by colleges], a manner of throwing dust in the public’s eye." William James. “The Ph.D. Octopus.” 1903. Gross, ed. Essays.

Education 287 People are not considered respectable in a field unless they have a badge, diploma or degree that says they know the field. "America is thus as a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him." William James. “The Ph.D. Octopus.” 1903. Gross, ed. Essays. [But do they know the field or do they know only one specialized part of it? RayS.]

Education 288 There is something wrong with assuming knowledge has been gained from passing examinations. "To interfere with the free development of talent...to foster academic snobbery by the prestige of certain privileged institutions, to transfer accredited value from essential manhood to an outward badge, to blight hopes...to divert the attention of aspiring youth from direct dealings with truth to the passing of examinations...." William James. “The Ph.D. Octopus.” 1903. Gross, ed. Essays.

Education 288 Does earning a PhD assure that the possessor will be a successful teacher in the classroom? "Will any one pretend for a moment that the doctor’s degree is a guarantee that its possessor will be successful as a teacher? ...notoriously his moral, social and personal characteristics may utterly disqualify him for success in the classroom; and of these characteristics his doctor’s examination is unable to take any account whatever." William James. “The Ph.D. Octopus.” 1903. Gross, ed. Essays.

Education 289 "[The PhD is] ...but a sham, a bauble, a dodge, whereby to decorate the catalogs of schools and colleges." William James. “The Ph.D. Octopus.” 1903. Gross, ed. Essays.

Education 290 If they don't complete the PhD they see themselves as failures. "...if they are less heroic morally, they will accept the failure [to achieve a PhD] as a sentence of doom that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited men thereafter." William James. “The Ph.D. Octopus.” 1903. Gross, ed. Essays.

Education 250 He blamed his inability to mix socially on his attending a private school while his brother who attended a public school could mix socially with everyone. "Robert on his brother Edward: …for, talking of his brother, and lamenting the extreme gaucherie which he really believed kept him [Edward] from mixing in proper society, he candidly and generously attributed it much less to any natural deficiency, that to the misfortune of a private education; while he himself [Robert], though probably without any particular, any material superiority by nature, merely from the advantage of a public school, was as well fitted to mix in the world as any other man." Austen, Sense and Sensibility.

Education 123 I don't have time to go to school; I have to make this farm a good one. "Ántonia stood up, lifting and dropping her shoulders as if they were stiff: ‘I ain’t got time to learn; I can work like mans now; my mother can’t say no more how Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him; I can work as much as him; school is all right for little boys; I can make this land one good farm.' " Cather, My Ántonia

Education 124 "Ántonia took my hand: ‘Some time you will tell me all those nice things you learn at the school, won’t you, Jimmy?’ " Cather, My Ántonia

Education 257 "I shall always look back on the time of mental awakening as one of the happiest in my life." Cather, My Ántonia

Education 11 One view of schooling: dreary teachers and unwilling children. "Thus she triumphed through the class, which was a typical...contest between a dreary teacher and unwilling children of twenty, won by the teacher because his opponents had to answer his questions, while their treacherous queries he could counter by demanding, 'Have you looked that up in the library? Well then, suppose you do!' ” Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Education 72 "…there's a whole lot of valuable time lost even at the U[niversity], studying poetry and French and subjects that never brought in anybody a cent." Lewis, Babbitt.


Education 323 One view of medical school. "Out of the gymnasium, he went to medical school, or rather, to two or three or four medical schools—Ehrlich was that kind of medical student…[it] was the opinion of the distinguished medical faculties of Breslau and Strasbourg and Freiburg and Leipsic that he was no ordinary student…was also their opinion he was an abominably bad student, which meant that Paul Ehrlich refused to memorize the ten thousand and fifty long words supposed to be needed for the cure of sick patients." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.

Education 88 "The Jesuits taught me to examine things for second meanings and deeper connections." DeLillo, Underworld.

Education 227 "What’s the use of all that education when you can’t remember it?" Mailer, The Naked and the Dead.

Education 444 "Not since he had been a young man had he hungered so for knowledge." Mailer, The Naked and the Dead.

Education 6 Attending school meant becoming over-wise compared to your neighbors who learned from their five senses and the parson. "...and that was how folks got over-wise, for they went to school...to those who could teach them more than their neighbors could learn with their five senses and the parson." George Eliot, Silas Marner.

Education 218 Education was the result and cause of curiosity. "In Saint Bernadine’s view, education was the dangerous result of, and the cause of more, curiosity." Manguel, A History of Reading.

Education 18 One view of education: memorization, rote knowledge. "Fanny could read, work, and write, but she had been taught nothing more; and as her cousins found her ignorant of many things with which they had been long familiar, they thought her prodigiously stupid… “My cousin cannot put the map of Europe together—or my cousin cannot tell the principal rivers in Russia—or she never heard of Asia Minor—or she does not know the difference between water-colors and crayons…did you ever hear anything so stupid…we used to repeat the chronological order of the kings of England, with the dates of their accession, and most of the principal events of their reigns!” Austen, Mansfield Park.

Education 10 Teachers more readily beat students than taught them. "…a good part of this world…seem to copy bad teachers, who more readily beat their students than educate them." Sir Thomas More, Utopia.

Education 112 After earning an engineering degree, the engineer's knowledge will be outdated in ten years. "At Westinghouse, for example, it is believed that the so-called “half-life” of a graduate engineer is only ten years—meaning that fully one-half of what he has learned will be outdated within a decade." Toffler, Future Shock.

Education 234 Education will change by using simulated experiences. "Education, already exploding in size, will become one of the key experience industries as it begins to employ experiential [simulation?] techniques to convey both knowledge and values to students." Toffler, Future Shock.

Education 274 "Failure to diversify education within the system will simply lead to the growth of alternative educational opportunities outside the system." Toffler, Future Shock.

Education 401 To what degree does the educational process mirror the world outside? "Young people passing through this [past] educational machine emerged into an adult society whose structure of jobs, roles and institutions resembled that of the school itself…school child did not simply learn facts that he could use later on; he lived, as well as learned, a way of life modeled after the one he would lead in the future." Toffler, Future Shock.

Education 403 Education must teach children how to adapt and change. "For education the lesson is clear: its prime objective must be to increase the individual’s 'cope-ability'—the speed and economy with which he can adapt to continual change…must…learn to make repeated, probabilistic, increasingly long-range assumptions about the future." Toffler, Future Shock.

Education 406 A part of education must occur as part of the outside world. "…mobile education that takes the student out of the classroom not merely to observe but to participate in significant community activity." Toffler, Future Shock.

Education 407 "…make use of 'mentors' drawn from the adult population…would not only transmit skills, but would show how the abstractions of the textbook are applied in life." Toffler, Future Shock. [Really? RayS.]

Education 407 "…factory-model school." Toffler, Future Shock. [What does this term mean? standardized results? That's a half-truth. RayS.]

Education 411 If education became too diverse, people would not be able to communicate with each other. "…alter the balance between the standardization and variety in the curriculum; [however] diversity carried to its extreme could produce a non-society in which the lack of common frames of reference would make communication between people even more difficult than it is today." Toffler, Future Shock.

Education 411 " …distinguish in education between 'data'…and 'skills.' ” Toffler, Future Shock.

Education 414 "Tomorrow’s schools must…teach not merely data, but ways to manipulate it." [Isn't manipulating data what we mean by skills? RayS.] Toffler, Future Shock.

Education 424 Focus on the unfinished challenges in various fields. "…at least one-third of all lectures and exercises ought to be concerned with scientific, technical, artistic and philosophical work in progress, anticipated crises, and possible future answers to these challenges." Toffler, Future Shock.

Education 425 Help students define their goals by having them write "future biographies." "To sharpen the individual’s future-focused role image, students can be asked to write their own “future autobiographies,” in which they picture themselves five, ten, or twenty years in the future." Toffler, Future Shock.

Education and government 14 "When the president-elect [JFK] asked if I would serve as his secretary of defense, I told him… “I am not qualified.” “Who is?” he asked [rhetorically] ... pointing out dryly that there were no schools for defense secretaries, as far as he knew, and no schools for presidents either." McNamara’s In Retrospect