Monday, January 09, 2012

Educational quotes 6 : Teaching and Learning




















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Dr Suess


For too long schools have had to comply with endless bureaucratic top down edicts, confusing curriculums and associated accountability demands which have taken the focus away from learning and teaching. As these imposed technocratic systems falter it is now time for creative teachers to also add their voices to the debate.

Students are born with a powerful desire to learn. Everything we do as parents and teachers must ensure that this powerful desire is kept alive. If there were to be one thing to be continually assessed it would be this desire... too many students leave with little to show for their time at school. Too many leave alienated and powerless.

'People see their own lives as stories; a lifelong story with a single hero or heroine... much contemporary unhappiness is due to the fact that people in high tech societies receive neither strong myths and stories from their culture nor the ability to construct their own... they lose the plot.' Guy Claxton in 'Wise -Up'

'We should turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.' John Holt

'Why don't we teach out children in school what they are? We should say to them, 'You are unique... you have the capacity for anything. You are a marvel.'' Charles Handy

'Learning power comprises both literacy and numeracy, and is ultimately more fundamental than either of them.' Guy Claxton in 'Wise -Up'

Underneath the visible problems with reading and writing lies the deeper problem of 'illearnacy': an acquired disabling of learning courage and learning initiative.' Guy Claxton in 'Wise-Up'

' The key is to replace a belief in 'experts' who 'deliver' knowledge of what good teaching is to workshops with communities of teachers who learn through ongoing collaboration and practice.' Dennis Sparks Nat Staff Dev Centre (US)

'education ultimately depends on what happens in classrooms... between teachers and learners. That is fundamental.'... 'I hope that teachers will discover the optimism and direction to combat the energy - draining pressures and frustrations of most educational settings.' David Perkins, 'Smart Schools.'

'It's about teaching and it's about time.' Stoll and Fink

'All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate.' John Dewey

'Teachers must be encouraged - I almost said 'freed', to pursue an education that strives for depth of understanding.' Howard Gardner

'The overwhelming number of teachers ...are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.' Alfie Kohn

'I haven't been in long enough to retire, but I have been in too long to quit. I like the children. I want to do good job, but I don't have the room to manoeuvre. What I think about things doesn't count. My ideas are not important...The central office grinds out curriculum guides ..that no one pays any attention to... I go to school everyday. I go through the motions. I'll put my time in. But my heart is not in it.' Jack Frymier
 
'Something is out of whack. The bureaucratic nature of the enterprise seems to have acquired a purpose of it's own.' Jack Frymier

'Most learning disabilities are actually teaching disabilities on the part of the school.' Retired Teacher

'All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning community depends on realizing the capacity to develop each gift'. Peter Senge
'What we want... is for students to get more interested in things, more involved in them, more engaged in wanting to know; to have projects that they can get excited about and work on over long periods of time, to be stimulated to find things out on their own.' Howard Gardner

'Most schools do a remarkably poor job of recognizing and rewarding future achievers... The standards of success in school have very little to do with standards thereafter' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins.' What did predict economic success was a willingness to take chances, most educational systems honor those who play it safe... The ones who do take chances have a hard time in school and are often penalized for their independent ways'. Farson and Keyes.

'We are creating a one size fits all system that needlessly brands many young people as failures, when they might thrive if offered a different education whose progress was measured differently. Paradoxically we're embracing standardized tests just when the economy is eliminating standardized jobs.' Robert Reich Former US Labor Secretary.

'teachers and administrators sleepwalk through their responsibilities, dulled and discouraged by the endless pressures and problems.' David Perkins 'Smart Schools.'

'A teacher's failure to create an intellectually reflective, engagement for learning is not simply malpractice but it is immoral particularly for students who cannot withdraw.' John Goodland Educator

'There are two reasons why people learn one because someone said you can't and the other because someone said you can.' Howard Wilson Retired NZ Principal

'The learner's attitude is thus an essential factor to determine the direction of his learning, whether he shall learn to do or not learn to do.' William Kilpatrick, Prof of Education 1917


'School improvement is most surely and thoroughly achieved when teachers engage in frequent, continuous and increasingly concrete talk about teaching practices... capable of distinguishing one practice and it's virtue from another.' Judith Warren Little Education Researcher

'Many children struggle in schools... because the way they are being taught is the way is incompatible with the way they learn.' Peter Senge

'We must give more attention to the interplay between the science of teaching - pedagogy - and the art of teaching... A teacher must be anchored in pedagogy and blend imagination, creativity and inspiration into the teaching learning process to ignite a passion for learning in student.' Peyton Williams, President ASCD 2003

'what a child can do today with assistance, she will be able to do by herself tomorrow'. Lev Vygotsky

'Teaching is the canny art of intellectual temptation' Jerome Bruner.


'Me te huruhuru te manu ka rere'
'It's the feathers that make the bird'  Maori saying

'Quality in education is what makes learning a pleasure and a joy.' Myron Tribus
 
'School can be a torture or an instrument of inspiration.' Higgins and Dolva
 
'It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather... I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanised or dehumanised.'
Haim Ginott
 
'In teaching students to think the emphasis is not on how many answers they know. Rather, the focus is on how well they behave when they don't know.' Art Costa
 
'The message we want to give to all students, "you are important, you can succeed, and we will not give up on you"'. T Patterson ASCD
 
'There can be no significant innovation in education that does not have at its centre the attitudes of the teachers. The beliefs, assumptions, feelings of teachers are the air of the learning environment; they determine the quality of life within it'. Postman and Weingartner
 
'Ano me whare pungawerewere'
'It is like the house of the spider - linked by a web (of values)'  Maori saying

'Education is about helping children, who are capable of self reflection and self organisation, and of enjoying a life where they explore their abundant potential'. Caine and Caine
 
'Teaching is not that difficult, it is thirty plus children, a good relationship and doing things well ' Howard Wilson

'The guts of teaching is simple - it is the relationship between a teacher and a group of kids' Howard Wilson    retired Taranaki principal

'I am always ready to learn.but I do not always like being taught.' Winston Churchill
 
'Going to school and getting and education are two different things; and they don't always happen at the same time.' Rosa Hill First Native Indian Physician
 
'Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.'Albert Einstein

'To be interested is to be absorbed in, wrapped up in, carried away by, some object. To take an interest is to be on the alert, to care about, to be attentive.' John Dewey
 
The principle goal of education is to create men and woman who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done'. Jean Piaget
 
'We are shaped and fashioned by what we love' Goethe
 
'Man ultimately decides for himself! And in the end, education must be education towards the ability to decide' Victor Frankl
 
'The problem is never to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.' De Hock VISA
 
'You cannot teach anybody anything. You can only help them discover it within themselves.'Galileo
 
'Schools should be about providing a sense of hope for all not achievement for the few.' Anon
 
'Schools must inquire deeper into their own practices, explore new ways to motivate their learners, make use of learning styles, introduce multiple intelligences, integrate learning, and teach thinking, and in the process discover the passion and moral purpose that makes teaching exciting and effective.'Fullan and Hargreaves


'we know at lot more now than the 'last time around'- the 1960s and 1970s - about how to work for smart schools... ' 'The smart school finds it's foundation in a rich and evolving set of principles about human thinking and learning.' David Perkins, 'Smart Schools.'.
 
'Do not confine your children to your own learning for they were born in another time.' Hebrew Proverb
 
'Every parent's deepest wish is that their children are self sufficient, happy, and able to live a full life.' Peter Block
 
'To be a teacher you must be a prophet - because you are trying to prepare people for a world thirty to fifty years into the future.' Gordon Brown MIT
 
'Smart people don't learn... because they have too much invested in proving what they know and avoiding being seen as not knowing.' Chris Agyris
 
'The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you are learning you're not old.' Rosalyn Sussman Yalow US Medical Physicist
 
'The world cannot afford to lose the talents of half it's people if we are to solve the many problems that beset us.' Rosalyn Sussman Yalow US Medical Physicist
 
'Old age is compulsory, wisdom is optional.' Anon
 
'You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizons. The more things you love, the more things you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about.' Ethyl Barrymore Actress
 
'Until recently, education has had it backwards, caring little for the teacher... and enormously about the content. Yet it is a gifted teacher who can infect a generation with the excitement of learning.' Aquarian Conspiracy
 
'Education must develop in youth the capabilities for engaging in intense concentrated involvement in an activity.' James Coleman 1977
 
'My education was a prolonged and concerted attack on my individuality' Neil Crofts Author Authenticity
 
'I was born exited' Mark Twain
 
'Learning is a matter of intensity not elapsed time.' Tom Peters , 'Re - Imagine'
 
'There is a road from the eye to the head that does not go through the intellect.' G K Chesterton
 
'We can whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children... we already know more than we need to know in order to do that.' Ron Edmonds Educator
 
'Having no alternative we were born creative.' Aquarian Conspiracy
 
'Human beings start out as butterflies and end up in cocoons.' Anon
 
'Unfortunately schools are no help because they teach us not to make connections... There should be a few people at least... pulling things together.' Edward Hall Anthropologist
 
'When Abraham Maslow asked a college class whether anyone had expectations of greatness, no one responded. 'Who else then', he replied dryly.' In 'Aquarian Conspiracy'.
 
'How can you do new math with an old math mind.' Charlie Brown /Peanuts
 
'The first problem for all of us, men and woman, is not to learn, but to unlearn.' Gloria Steinem US Feminist
 
'Teachers who do a bad job with old tools are likely to do a worse job with strange new tools.' Anon
 
'The young child approaching a new subject or anew problem is like the scientist operating at the edge of his chosen field.' Jerome Bruner
 
'Good teaching is forever being on the cutting edge of a child's competence'. Jerome Bruner 86
 
'The teacher's role in discussion is to keep it going along fruitful lines - be moderating, guiding, correcting and arguing like one more students.' Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal
 
.
'The metaphor ( coaching) with sports is meant quite seriously... the coach stands back , observes the performance, and provides guidance. The coach applauds strengths, identifies weaknesses, points up principles, offers guiding and often inspiring imagery, and decides what kind of practice to emphasize.' David Perkins 'Smart Schools.'
 
'Expert tutors often do not help very much. They hang back letting the student manage as much as possible. And when things go awry, rather than help directly they raise questions: 'Could you explain this step again? How did you... ?' Mark Lepper Stanford Psychologist
 
'The difference between reform and transformation is as if we have been trying to attach wings to a caterpillar... it is high time we freed ourselves of attachment to old forms and eased the flight of the unfettered human mind.' 'Aquarian Conspiracy'
 
'No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in their mode of thought.' John Stuart Mills.
 
'Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.' Douglas Adams, Author 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'
 
'To change your reality you have to change your inner thoughts.' David Bohm Physicist
 
'One of the saddest things about US education is that the wisdom of our most successful teachers is lost to the profession when they retire.' John Dewey
 
I discovered the brutally simple motivation behind the development of impositions of all systematic instructional programmes and tests - lack of trust that teachers can teach and students can learn.' Frank Smith 'Insult to Intelligence'
 
'The too soft teacher reinforces the learner's natural wish to retreat and stay safe... the teacher must know when to let the learner struggle... we must not be spared our learning. Risk brings its own rewards.' Aquarian Conspiracy
 
'In every story I have heard, good teachers share one trait: a strong sense of personal identity infuses their work'. Parker Palmer 'Courage to Teach'.
 
'All true thoughts have been thought through already a thousand times; but to make them truly yours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.' Goethe
 
'Time given to thought is the greatest time saver of all'. Norman Cousins
 
'The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming? Somerset Maughan
 
'Don't just do something, stand there.' Zen saying
 
'Some people are making such thorough plans for rainy days that they aren't enjoying today's sunshine.' William Feather US Author
 
'Only the mediocre are always at their best.' Somerset Maughan
 
'Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we were never able to do.' Peter Senge
 
' The biggest thing about being someone is imajunation. Before you can be something, you must imajun it.' Fifth Grader quoted by S Papert
 
'each individual brain is more like a unique and unimaginably dense rain forest, teeming with growth and decay. It is less like a programmed machine than an ecological habitat that mimics the evolution of life itself.' Prof Edleman Nobel Prize winner
 
'Learning is spontaneous, unpredictable, fun, passionate, dangerous.' Bowring - Carr and Burnham West UK Educators
 
'A child's attitude towards everything is an artist's attitude.' Willa Cather US Novelist
 
'Art should simplify.' Willa Cather US Novelist
 
'We don't have to make human beings smart. They are born smart. All we have to do is stop doing things that make them stupid.' John Holt
 
'Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves'. Piaget
 
'Morpheus: 'I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one who must walk through it' The Matrix (Film)
 
Of a gifted teacher (she) 'has an unfailing heart and eye for magical classrooms and who loses sleep over any sliver of work at less than the highest quality'. Carol Ann Tomlinson 'The Differentiated Classroom
 
'The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive. It begins earlier and lasts longer' Edward T Hall ( Anthropologist)
 
'Out of the questions of students come most of the creative ideas and discoveries'. Ellen Langer
 
'To be a teacher you must be a prophet - because you are trying to prepare people for a world thirty to fifty years into the future.' Gordon Brown former Dean MIT
 
 'If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it.' Mao Zedong
 
I believe babies are born as innovative personalities... But our social processes work to stamp out exploration and questioning.' Jay Forrestor Prof MIT
 
'Learning to use your intuition is learning to be your own teacher'. Vaughan
 
'Being 'educated' means knowing how little I really know.' Carol T Lloyd
 
'As your island of knowledge grows, so does your shoreline of wonder.' Anon
 
'Good teaching is forever being on the cutting edge of a child competence'. Jerome Bruner
 
'Let the main object... to seek and to find a method of instruction, by which teachers may teach less, but learners learn more.' John Amos Comenius
 
'I cured the patient but he died' is as logical as saying 'I taught the pupil, but she did not learn.' Bowring -Carr and John Burnham West UK Educators
 
'The open teacher ... establishes rapport and resonance, sensing unspoken needs, conflicts, hopes and fears. Respecting the learners autonomy, the teacher spends more time helping to articulate the urgent questions than demanding the right answers.' Aquarian Conspiracy
 
'Progressive white teachers seem to say to their black students 'Let me help you find your voice. I promise not to criticize one note as you search for your song'. But the black teachers say 'I've heard your song loud and clear. Now I want to teach you to harmonize with the rest of the world.'' Delpit 'The Silenced Dialogue'
 
'teachers who respond to their children's message, and not to their mistakes, appeared to help their children more.' John Smith Warwick Elley NZ Educators
 
'The open teacher helps the learner discover patterns and connections, fosters strange new possibilities, and is a midwife to ideas.' Aquarian Conspiracy
 
'We trust the teacher who gives us stress, pain or drudgery when we need it. And we resent the teacher who... takes us into deep water when we are frightened of the shallow'. Aquarian Conspiracy
 
'Come to the edge', he said.
They said, 'We are afraid'
'Come to the edge', he said
They came
He pushed them... and they flew. Guillaume Apollinaire Poet
 
Before we choose our tools and techniques we must choose our dreams and values.' Anon
 
'If you want to make a mark you have to take a risk.' Terrance E Deal
 
'After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world depends' Wallace Stevens
 
'Studies of high school gradates rarely find any correlation between recognition in high school and recognition thereafter... The terms are too different. What worked in high school seldom works later... Those not tested by setbacks when young may never learn how to rebound from defeat.' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever makes the Most Mistakes Wins.'

 'We are born trying to gain power over our environment. We live and die trying to figure out who we are; what life means; how to understand joy, pain, victory, and death; how we relate to each other; and why we are here. The disciplines we study- art music, literature, mathematics, science or philosophy- give us lenses... the skills... the power to use the understandings in meaningful ways.' Phenix 1986
 
 
'In order for the brain to comprehend the heart must first listen.' David Perkins, 'Smart Schools.'
 
'To live our lives fully, to work whole heartily, to refuse directly what we can't swallow, to accepts the mystery in all matters of meaning- this is the ultimate adventure.' Peter Block, Philosopher
 
 
 'One barrier... is the impoverishment of classroom language, the failure to cultivate a common vocabulary about inquiry, explanation, argument and problem solving. David Perkins 'Smart Schools.'
 
'Good questions work on us, we don't work on them. They are not a project to be completed but a doorway opening onto greater depth of understanding, actions that will take us into being more fully alive. Peter Block
 
'I will act as if what I do will make a difference.' William James
 
'An individual who stands out, or disagrees or takes risks is a danger to such systems and is effortlessly and, unconsciously sidelined.' John Ralston Saul 'Voltaire's Bastards.'
 
'Intelligence is knowing what to do when you don't know what to do.' Art Costa
 
'We have to learn to make our own way through a complex world without the benefit of an accepted trustworthy route map.' Guy Claxton in 'Wise -Up'
 
'Know how - can do'. 'Don't know how - but will give it a go.' Extended 'Place Makers Motto' by Bruce Hammonds
 
'It is amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.' Charles Kettering US Inventor
 
'When the going gets tough the tough get going!' Saying
 
'The germ of an idea doesn't make the sculpture that stands up... so the next stage is hard work' Csikszentmihalyi 'Nature of Insight'.
 
'It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.' Calude Bernard, French Psychologist 1813-78
 
'Powerful learning strategies can most simply be thought of what we presently do for gifted and talented children. What works for them works just as well for 'at risk' students.' Henry M Levin Accelerated Schools Project.
 
'One in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.' Grateful Dead
 
'Wherever you are be there.' Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
'We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.' Anais Nin Diarist
 
'Don't go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.' Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
'Destiny is not a matter of chance it is a matter of choice.' Anon
 
'Life is the path you beat while you walk it It's the walking that beats the path It is not the path that makes the walk'. Antonio Machardo Poet
 
'Eagles don't flock - you have to find them one at a time.' Ross Perot Businessman
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'I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.' Winston Churchill
 
'We must believe in ourselves as no one else will believe in us, we must match our expectations with the competence, courage and determination to succeed.' Rosalyn Sussman Yalow US Medical Physicist
 
'In order to act, you must be somewhat insane .A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.' Georges Clemenceau Premier of France 1917-20
 
'When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves he isn't a man of action.' Georges Clemenceau Premier of France 1917- 20
 
'You learn at your best when you have something you care about and can get pleasure in being engaged in.' Howard Gardner
 
'The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive. It begins earlier and lasts longer.' Edward Hall Anthropologist
 
'To be nobody - but - myself - in a world which is doing it's best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human can fight, and never stop fighting.' e e cumming us poet
 
'What gives people superiority at a task is true intention. That makes you attuned to everything.' Weiner Erhard
 
'If there is a way to do it better... find it!' Thomas Edison
 
'Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better'. Samuel Beckett
 
'You miss 100% of all the shots you never take,' Wayne Gretsky Ice Hockey Coach
 
'Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. You simply 'must do' things.' Ray Bradbury
 
'Getting the balance right between intuitive experimentation and conscious deliberation is vital. Think too little and you may be stuck with bad habits. Think too much and you may become paralyzed with self consciousness. Guy Claxton 'Wise Up'
 
'I have my faults but changing my tune is not one of them.' Samuel Beckett
 
'A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spend doing nothing.' George Bernard Shaw
 
'The major difference between the 'best' and the 'average' is that the 'best' get as much pleasure from practice as performance.' Ben Zander
 
'It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.' Alfred North Whitehead.
 
'Education is knowing where to go to find out what you need to know; and its knowing how to use the information you get.' William Feather US Author
 
'Reason can answer questions, but imagination has to ask them.' Ralph Gerard
 
'Thinking is past experience guiding present actions.' William Kilpatrick Educator 1917
 
'The golden rule is that there are no golden rules' G B Shaw
 
'Te wao nui tane ( about giant NZ Kauri trees 'Standing out from the crowd') Maori saying
 
'People whose talents are not exploited become disenchanted and disruptive.' Sir Terrance Conran ( Decorator)
 
'Talent comes with an individual name tag.' Charles Handy
 
'The mind aware of itself is a pilot... vastly freer than a passenger mind.' Marilyn Ferguson
 
'We have two strategies for coping; the way of avoidance or the way of attention.' Marilyn Ferguson
 
'You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.' Mark Twain
 
'To go faster you must slow down.' John Brunner Author
 
'Fear of knowing is very deeply a fear of doing.' Abraham Maslow
 
'It is not so important to have all the answers as to be hungry for them.' Carol Ann Tomlinson 'The Differentiated Classroom'
 
'If everyone is thinking alike then somebody is not thinking.' George S Paton
 
'In any work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts' Ralph Waldo Emerson.
 
'Plan to be better today, but don't ever plan to be finished' Carol Ann Tomlinson
 
'If poetry comes as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.' John Keats
 
'The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.' William James
 
'If necessity is the mother of invention what was papa doing?' Anon
 
'Fledgling skiers make the most progress when they are pushed outside their comfort zone, but not so far that they're sacred off the slopes altogether.' Ski Instructor
 
'Courage isn't lack of fear, after all, it's the ability to carry on despite the fear. General Omar Bradley called courage the 'capacity to carry on properly even when scared half to death.' Genuine risk takers not only have the guts to act in face of harrowing apprehension, they know how to harness fear's energy' Farson and Keyes, 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins.'
 
Fearing failure is not necessarily a bad thing. Excitement is the flip side of fear. Any ten year old on a skateboard knows that exhilaration is primarily fear transformed... Fear begins as a negative sensation but can end on a positive note in the form of excitement, elation, exhilaration, euphoria, even ecstasy. Enthusiasm is close cousin. So are intensity and concentration.' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins.
 
'Winning and losing aren't all they're cracked up to be, but the trip to the destination is.' John Wooden UCLA Basketball Coach
 
'the Samurai were fierce warriors. What is less known is how much of their thoughts were based on achieving victory by avoiding thoughts of victory. They knew that focusing on the outcome of a contest made defeat more likely... to achieve victory by becoming fully absorbed in the process that would lead them there.' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins.
 
Winning is not everything - but making the effort to win was... If you can't accept losing, you can't win' Vince Lombardi Basketball coach.
 
'By not trying too hard, we avoid learning what our true potential is, and having to fulfill it. Doing our best can be deeply threatening. It forces us to consider what we're actually capable of accomplishing. Once we learn the lesson we can't unlearn it. Our true potential becomes a shining light we can follow...' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins'.
 
'An exaggerated fear of losing is the ugly sibling of an over emphasis on winning. Both cloud the mind.... The players most urged to victory by mothers and fathers proved to be the most cautious. Those whose parents cheered but didn't push them were then ones most likely to take chances -and win'. Farson and Keynes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins.'
 
'I worry that whoever thought up the term 'quality control' thought if we didn't control it, it would get out of hand.' Lily Tomlin Singer
 
'Looking at students work brings you face to face with your values.' Daniel Barron US Nat Reform Faculty.
 
'To attract joy and create more success, try doing less but doing it with more enthusiasm.' Phillip Humbert http://www.philliphumbert.com/
 
'A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.' Roald Dahl ( Author)
 
'To develop a complete mind: study the science of art; study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.' Leonardo da Vinci
 
'Most advances in science comes from when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.' Peter Burdon
 
'We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as in insoluble problems. John W Gardner
 
'Imagination is more important than knowledge.' Albert Einstein
 
'Life is a series of lessons that have to be understood.' Thomas Carlyle
 
'A fear of foolishness keeps us from painting the pictures we would like to paint, composing the poems, courting the lovers, making the friends, pursuing the jobs, starting the businesses. Those who know this, can confront and transcend their fear of ridicule, are usually in a strong position... Every path breaker has looked foolish, and been humiliated, yet society depends on them utterly... Only those who are willing to risk looking foolish can invent a breakthrough.' Farson and Keyes 'Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins'
 
'The best work we do is on the verge of embarrassing us, always.' Arthur Miller Playwright.
 
'A fear of foolishness can never be conquered completely. Nor should it be... Deep down shyness is a secret most charismatic people have.' Farson and Keyes
 
'We are all afraid. That's the thing that unites all truly successful people: fear, fear of failing, fear of criticism, fear of letting down the team in some way. That why they try so hard, that's why they pay attention to detail and try to get every possible duck in a row. It's fear'. Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's Speech Writer.
 
'Ana te toka te moana Live like a rock in the sea He akinga na nga tai washed by the tides' Maori saying
 
'It is not the biggest, the brightest or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest.' Charles Darwin
 
'The secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and a thousand things well.' Henry Walpole
 
'I have learnt to say the word impossible with great caution.' Verner von Braun

'Those periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times.' Csikszentmihalyi
 
'Excellence is the new forever.' Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
'We've got to do fewer things in school. The greatest enemy of understanding is coverage... You've got to take enough time to get kids deeply involved in something so they can think about it in lots of different ways and apply it.' Howard Gardner
 
Giving students the power and then watching them strive for excellence is an incredible teaching experience.' Catherine Doanne
 
'Enthusiasm is the match that lights the candle of achievement.' William Arthur Boyd
 
'Nothing has happened in education until it has happened to a student.' Joseph Carroll
 
'To play the trumpet well, a musician can not let more than a few days pass without practicing.'Csikszentmihalyi  
 
'The ability to take misfortune and make something good come of it is a rare gift. Those who possess it are ..said to have resilience or courage.' Csikszentmihalyi
 
' "How does one become a butterfly?" She asked pensively. "You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar".' Trina Paula
 
 
 

2 comments:

Struan McKenzie said...

Brilliant collection Bruce!
Here's one of my favourites- 'Teaching is not like the art of painting, where more is added to reveal an image, it is more like the art of sculpture, where obstacles are removed to reveal the amazing thing that lies within.' John Taylor Gatto.
I have lended the book out, so this is me writing it from memory, I don't think I've got it quite right, but you get my drift.

Bruce Hammonds said...

Thanks Struan

I will include the quote - if you need to correct it let me know. Gatto is mentioned a lot in Tom Peters excellent book 'Re -Imagine'.