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| Philosopical Wanderings of Others Far Wiser than I... | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The very world rests on the breath of children in the schoolhouse.
--The Talmud |
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The most significant work in the entire world goes in in schools. Period.
--Peggy O'Brien's introduction to Shakespeare Set Free (1993) |
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| How did they command such deference -- English teachers? Compared to the men who taught physics or biology, what did they really know of the world? It seemed to me, and not only to me, that they knew exactly what was most worth knowing. Unlike our math and science teachers, who modestly stuck to their subjects, they tended to be polymaths. Adept as they were at dissection, they would never leave a poem or a novel strewn about in pieces like some butchered frog reeking of formaldehyde. They'd stitch it back together with history and psychology, philosophy, religion, and even, on occasion, science. Without pandering to your presumed desire to identify with the hero of a story, they made you feel that what mattered to the writer had consequences for you, too."
--Tobias Wolf in Old School (2000) |
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A teacher affects eternity; [s]he can never tell where his[or her] influence stops.
--Henry Brooks Adams |
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| Only the educated are free.
--Epictetus |
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| Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education.
--John F. Kennedy |
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| The education of children must never be interrupted, even to rebuild the Temple.
--The Talmud |
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| "If the 1st Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch."
-Justice Thurgood Marshall writing the majority opinion in STANLEY v. GEORGIA |
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| What goes on daily in the mind of a student is the future creating itself. What goes on in your classroom -- second grade, eighth grade, high-school sophomore, or undergraduate -- is more important than anyting that ever has or ever will take place in any boardroom or laboratory or launching pad. The true center of everything in school is what's happening in the mind of a student. And the person who has the most direct influence on that is a teacher. This is the world's most important work.
--Peggy O'Brien's introduction to Shakespeare Set Free (1993) |
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| The scholar takes precedence over the king.
--The Talmud |
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