William H. Gass Quotes

I'm a shy, nervous person, and I don't like teaching with "terms." I didn't teach them, like, "This is first person, this is second person, this is foreshadowing," or whatever, so no one probably felt like they were learning anything. But I feel like teaching in that way reduces the concept to a term.

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

Of all the excellent teachers of college English whom I have known I have never discovered one who knew precisely what he was doing. Therein have lain their power and their charm.

More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given

We're not trying to be the only route into teaching. We do put enormous energy into understanding what differentiates the most successful teachers.

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.

The best teachers are those who keep students motivated, challenged and flourishing.

A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.

I have learned that, although I am a good teacher, I am a much better student, and I was blessed to learn valuable lessons from my students on a daily basis. They taught me the importance of teaching to a student - and not to a test.

Teachers are free to teach, but not to preach—to educate but not to indoctrinate.

By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, they do not cheat. They do not try to persuade at any cost. They appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority ...

We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.

The teacher ought also to be specially on his guard against taking unfair advantage of the student’s immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher’s own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own.

It is not the least service which a college or university may render to those under its instruction, to habituate them to looking not only patiently but methodically on both sides, before adopting any conclusion upon controverted issues.

If you are giving a graduate course you don't try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.

I was a PE teacher, and when you teach, you can say, 'You have to do this.' It's an order. That's one way. Or you can say, 'Listen, we have these problems, so give me the solution,' and they have to think about it. Or you can say, 'Here are three options - which one is best?'

Wherever there are beginners and experts, old and young, there is some kind of learning going on, some kind of teaching. We are all pupils and we are all teachers.

Teachers may think they are stuffing minds, but all they are ever affecting is the memory. Nothing can ever be forced into anyone's mind except by brainwashing, which is the very opposite of genuine teaching.

Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.

In a better world, science teachers would teach creationism along with evolution as an exercise in critical thinking.

The things taught in schools & colleges are not an education but the means of education.

[The error in the teaching of mathematics is that] mathematics is expected either to be immediately attractive to students on its own merits or to be accepted by students solely on the basis of the teacher's assurance that it will be helpful in later life. [And yet,] mathematlcs is the key to understanding and mastering our physical, social and biological worlds.

The most effective teachers embody the teaching they give out.

We think it's about little techniques and tricks, but techniques only take you so far. We need teachers who care about kids, who care about what they teach, and who can communicate with kids.

He that teaches us anything which we knew not before is undoubtedly to be reverenced as a master.