Education Quotes

Education quotes by David Gribble – asterisks by David's favourites. If you use any of them please include a link back to the site somewhere.

	Adults find it extraordinarily difficult to give children the respect they deserve.
	When the problems you face are real, you really want to solve them.
	There is no point in rebelling against yourself.
	It is difficult for schools to avoid suppressing a child’s natural altruism.
	It is easier to run a school of conformists than a school of individuals, but conformists, by definition, can never be themselves.
	When you have a job as a grown-up you are only asked to do things that you can do correctly. Why are schools always asking children to do things half of which they will get wrong?
	Only teachers and customers in shops are called sir and miss.
	If I make you call me sir I deny social equality.
	Teaching is not a matter of making children learn; it is a matter of making sure you don’t get in their way.
	Teachers know more about their subjects than children do; children know more about childhood.
	We need to help adolescents not to be afraid of making fools of themselves.
	You must never destroy a child’s confidence in his or her own judgment.
	Preaching is an ineffective way of encouraging virtue.
	Punishment creates rebels.
	Teachers need to be able to admire their pupils.
	Admiration nurtures ambition.
	Condescending praise induces disgust.
	It is wonderful when an adult and a child discover something together that neither of them knew before.
	One of the aspects of good teaching is good listening.
	What you discover for yourself is vastly more memorable than what you are told.
	The best learning happens without you noticing.
	Learning is a pleasure; it does not need to be enforced.
	It is a delight to understand something new.
	There is no need to be in a hurry to grow up.
	At Sands life and education overlap. Children really cook lunch, really redecorate the classrooms, really appoint the staff, really answer the phone in the office, really deal with problems of behaviour.
	Honesty is more important than fear; to demand obedience is to risk putting fear above honesty.
	When children trust their teachers, no one needs to bluff.
	What matters is doing things for the right reasons.
	Children naturally want to succeed. Why do so many teachers treat them as if they wanted to fail?
	For most adolescents school uniform is a badge of inadequacy.
	You don’t need to humiliate children to teach them.
	There is no need to use force to get people to do something that they can see to be in their own interest.
	Democratic schools avoid the error of trying to prevent children from helping one another.
	Rules, by requiring certain types of behaviour, tend to turn children against them.
	If you are treated like an ignorant lout, you behave like an ignorant lout.
	Teachers must give children what they need without worrying about whether they deserve it.
	Happiness is an important part of school; you cannot learn easily when you are unhappy.
	It is hard to learn anything that seems entirely irrelevant.
	Concern for others is a more important guide to behaviour than obedience to rules.
	Children’s self-respect only flourishes if they are respected.
	Where children see moral issues, adults often only see questions of expediency.
	Good teachers are humble.