quotations about teaching
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
JOHN COTTON DANA
New York Times Book Review, March 5, 1967
Deciding to teach is an indication you are interested in joining an engaging, worthwhile, and yet challenging profession. It is important to recognize that schools are a microcosm of society. Just as society has changed (i.e., technological advancements) and become more diverse, so too have schools, and they may be quite different from what you recall as a student.
GLADIS KERSAINT & DENISSE R. THOMPSON
"Advice on Making a Mid-Career Change to Teaching", Education Week, June 13, 2017
Life is amazing: and the teacher had better prepare himself to be a medium for that amazement.
EDWARD BLISHEN
Donkey Work
Reflecting on my past teaching mistakes has made me more reflective about who I am. Sure, part of teaching is a performance, pretending to be in a better mood than I am some days, being patient even when I face personal struggles. But the real work of teaching involves making the world, and myself, knowable to students.
BENJAMIN DOXTDATOR
"My First-Nations Identity Feels More Like An Absence", NPR, May 30, 2017
Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles on a standardized test; we know that's not true.
BARACK OBAMA
National Education Association Speech, 2007
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Motto for the astronomy building of Junior College, Pasadena, California
O ye! who teach the ingenious youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany or Spain,
I pray ye flog them upon all occasions,
It mends their morals, never mind the pain.
LORD BYRON
Don Juan
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
JOHN STEINBECK
"...like captured fireflies"
No man can instruct more than half-a-dozen students at once. The whole problem of education is one of its cost in money.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music, Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
You know what's adorable about inspirational teacher movies? The way they grade papers. When Robin Williams sits down in front of a stack of papers in Dead Poets Society, they're all neatly arranged and he's staring intently at one, pen poised, ready to help guide one of those good-looking boys down the road to self-discovery before jotting down a score in his leather-bound grade book. Look, maybe I'm just doing it wrong. But my grade book is a dog-eared old Squibbs--which I had to buy myself, since the school doesn't give those out anymore--that is so overflowing with student work it's about to attain consciousness and try to take over the world.
CAPTAIN AWESOME
"6 Ways in Which Teaching Is Nothing Like the Movies", We Are Teachers, December 4, 2015
The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.
BERTOLT BRECHT
Life of Galileo
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
"Hartley Coleridge", Literary Studies
The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.
ELBERT HUBBARD
A Thousand & One Epigrams
I learned that religious/spiritual teaching is a very powerful means of biased indoctrination that uses guilt and fear to squelch freedom of thought and open honest inquiry.
CARTER WARDEN
"Categorically Shedding Decades of Clergy Guilt", Patheos, June 15, 2017
What I've learned about teaching is to refer back to the root of that word, which is educo, which means "to pull from." Education does not mean jamming information into somebody's head. Rather, it's that ancient idea that all knowledge is within us; to teach is to help somebody pull it out of themselves.
ALAN ARKIN
Esquire, March 2007
Any teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be!
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Electronic Tutors
Teaching is the systematic inculcation of knowledge.
JOHN MILTON GREGORY
The Seven Laws of Teaching
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
JACQUES BARZUN
Newsweek, December 5, 1955
Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism ... the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young.
HENRY S. CANBY
Alma Mater