John McGahern Quotes

We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.

I spent lots of time reading the encyclopedia and really kind of an eclectic approach to learning things - not very structured.

I just had to plod along without having any teaching, which was a pity.

Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way.

Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being "with it," yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.

I was not a great student at the University of Chicago. I think that is - the record will bare me out. But I spent a lot of time reading history, sociology, psychology - reading everything except what I was supposed to read for class the next day.

He wanted nothing, for the time being, except to understand .... Without advice, assistance or plan, he began reading an incongruous assortment of books; he would find some passage which he could not understand in one book, and he would get another on that subject .... There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind.

Too often we see that teachers and educational administrators feel threatened by self-organized learning. They, therefore, think it is not learning at all.

Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.

The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.

Experiments show that children in unsupervised groups are capable of answering questions many years ahead of the material they're learning in school. In fact, they seem to enjoy the absence of adult supervision, and they are very confident of finding the right answer.

My mom comes from a really out-there upbringing, so for her, the way she raised me is pretty disciplined. I was home-schooled but more really unschooled, really.

I preferred to study those subjects that were of interest to me.

I've never liked having like a set kind of schedule of training. Even when I was doing guitar lessons, I never used to practice.

My teachers helped guide and motivate me; but the responsibility of learning was left with me, an approach to learning which was later reinforced by my experiences at Amherst.

When I was 16, I was taught by a wonderful teacher who let me ignore the Greek syllabus and just read Homer.

I don't remember being taught to read, and by the time I was seven years old, I had read a very great many books, good, bad, and indifferent.

I don't like books that seem to want to teach me things. Which is not to say that one doesn't learn from books - but you do your own learning in your own way.

Looking back, I realise it wasn't only gym I dreaded at school. Every class was a torment. It wasn't knowledge I objected to but instruction. Why couldn't they just tell us what books to read and leave us to get on and read them?

I don't have a coach. I haven't had a coach for, like, years.

As is true for most people I know, I've always loved learning. As is also true for most people I know, I always hated school. Why is that?

No matter how much I admire our schools, I know that no university exists that can provide an education; what a university can provide is an outline, to give the learner a direction and guidance. The rest one has to do for oneself.

Let every student enter the school with this advice. No matter how good the school is, his education is in his own hands. All education must be self education.

The aim of all education is, or should be, to teach people to educate themselves.

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.