Classroom Dynamics Quotes

Young gentlemen, who are to display their knowledge to the world, should have every motive of emulation, should be formed into regular classes, should read and dispute together, should have all the honors, and, if one may say so, the pomp of learning set before them, to call up their ardor. It is their business, and they should apply to it as such.

PERIPATETIC, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in order to avoid his pupil's objections. A needless precaution - they knew no more of the matter than he.

I wonder if liberal kids call liberal talk shows and ask how to get along in a conservative teacher's class? No. No. It doesn't happen, 'cause there's no thought of getting along.

Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn.

Definitely, in any teaching situation, there are the clueless students; then there are the ones who get it a little quicker.

Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing.

My last name is Taylor. So in school, every time we got a project, I'm at the end. So I get to see the whole class do their project. Then, when it comes time to do mine, of course I'd pass, and the teacher wouldn't have too many questions.

Teaching may be compared to selling commodities. No one can sell unless somebody buys.

The issue here isn't whether every student is brainwashed, it's whether it is appropriate.

It's the less bright students who make teachers teach better.

When I recall my teachers at school, I realise that half of them were abnormal. . . . We pupils of old Austria were brought up to respect old people and women. But on our professors we had no mercy; they were our natural enemies. The majority of them were somewhat mentally deranged, and quite a few ended their days as honest-to-God lunatics! . . . I was in particular bad odor with the teachers. I showed not the slightest aptitude for foreign languages - though I might have, had not the teacher been a congenital idiot. I could not bear the sight of him.

Governments decide they know best and they're going to tell you what to do. The trouble is that education doesn't go on in the committee rooms of our legislative buildings. It happens in classrooms and schools, and the people who do it are the teachers and the students. And if you remove their discretion, it stops working.

Children learn and remember at least as much from the context of the classroom as from the content of the coursework.

As far as innovation goes, I can tell you that Korean students are reluctant to step out of line. If I ask questions, nobody raises their hands - not because they don't know the answers, but because they don't want to step out of line.

[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).

Knowing what to expect from a teacher is a really good thing, of course: It lets you get the right answers more quickly than you would otherwise.

To be clear, people are the most important part of any classroom. If given the choice between a great teacher and the world's most advanced education technology, I'd pick the teacher any day for my own children.

Let’s not forget that American democracy started with ‘We the People’ agreeing to work hard to create ‘a more perfect union.’ We’ve lost the idea that politics begins at home with what happens in families, in neighborhoods, in classrooms, in congregations. We called this democracy into being – and if we want to call this democracy back to its highest values, it’s got to be the us doing that calling. That’s not going to happen if ‘We the People’ don’t know how to talk to one another with civility and hold our differences in a creative, life-giving way.

I was just a quiet kid, really. I wasn't the class clown at all.

The idea that teaching is somehow the delivery of the goods is such a misunderstanding of what actually goes on.

Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.

At school in the 1970s, no one cared about bullying. I spent the first four years being the apple of the teachers' eye and being bullied for it.

The best students always are flunking. Every good teacher knows that.

My students are very special. They are my source of pride, my source of joy, my source of hope. I am terribly fond of my students.