Rabindranath Tagore Quotes

Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.

It is sentimentalism to assume that the teaching of life can always be fitted to the child's interests, just as it is empty formalism to force the child to parrot the formulas of adult society. Interests can be created and stimulated.

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.

My father taught in the wise way which unfolds what lies in the child

It is a monstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics on the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental powers. It would be monstrous even if it were true.

What blockheads are those wise persons, who think it necessary that a child should comprehend everything it reads.

The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin.

We put [young children] into kindergarten where their reasoning powers are ruined; or, if we can afford it, we buy Montessori outfits that were invented for semi-imbeciles in Italian slums; or we send them to outdoor schools and give them prizes for sleeping.

The instruction of children should aim gradually to combine knowing and doing. Among all sciences mathematics seems to be the only one of a kind to satisfy this aim most completely.

We await the successsive births in the soul of the child. We give all possible material, that nothing may lack to the groping soul, and then we watch for the perfect faculty to come, safeguarding the child from interruption so that it may carry its efforts through.

Learning is effortless. Learning is a painless process. Learning is something we do naturally!

Is not education the art of drawing out full manhood of the children under training?

The schoolmaster is the person who takes the children off the parents' hands for a consideration. That is to say, he establishes a child prison, engages a number of employee schoolmasters as turnkeys, and covers up the essential cruelty and unnaturalness of the situation by torturing the children if they do not learn, and calling this process, which is within the capacity of any fool or blackguard, by the sacred name of Teaching.

Children are not less intelligent than adults; what they are is less informed.

A teacher who cannot explain any abstract subject to a child does not himself thoroughly understand his subject; if he does not attempt to break down his knowledge to fit the child's mind, he does not understand teaching.

The first duty of the educator, whether he is involved with the newborn infant or the older child, is to recognize the human personality of the young being and respect it.

You've got to accept the fact that you are basically not teaching a subject, you are teaching children

The observation of the way in which the children pass from the first disordered movements to those which are spontaneous and ordered -- this is the book of the teacher; this is the book which must inspire her actions . . .

The elements of instruction should be presented to the mind in childhood, but not with any compulsion.

In some small field each child should attain, within the limited range of its experience and observation, the power to draw a justly limited inference from observed facts.

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.

Little children can learn anything, just as they can learn a foreign language. The mind is so absorbent then. There ought to be a real program to educate teachers who want to teach grade school children about history.

The policy of letting the child 'do what he likes' is an insidious one, since the children are encouraged to continue always at their original superficial level, without receiving guidance in study. Furthermore, the 'three Rs,' the fundamental tools, are neglected as long as possible, with the result that the child's chance to develop his mind is greatly retarded. The policy of teaching words via pictures instead of by the alphabet tends to deprive the young child of the greatest reasoning tool of all.

Children who are read to learn two things: First, that reading is worthwhile, and second, that they are worthwhile.