This page contains quotations on education by some famous (and not so famous) personalities.
“Humiliation and mental oppression by ignorant and selfish teachers wreak havoc in the youthful mind that can never be undone and often exert a baleful influence in later life”. (Albert Einstein)
“Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty”. (Albert Einstein)
“One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year”. (Albert Einstein)
“He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once”. (Albert Einstein)
“Most teachers waste their time by asking questions which are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning has for its purpose to discover what the pupil knows or is capable of knowing”. (Albert Einstein)
“It is little short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not already completely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry…. I believe that one could even deprive a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness if one could force it with a whip to eat continuously whether it were hungry or not”. (Albert Einstein)
“The human animal is a learning animal. We like to learn; we need to learn; we are good at it; we don’t need to be shown how or made to do it, made to do it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it”. (John Holt)
“Little children love the world. That is why they are so good at learning about it. For it is love, not tricks and techniques of thought, that lies at the heart of all true learning. Can we bring ourselves to let children learn and grow through that love?” (John Holt)
“No use to shout at them to pay attention. If the situations, the materials, the problems before the child do not interest him, his attention will slip off to what does interest him, and no amount of exhortation of threats will bring it back”. (John Holt)
“Since we can’t know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned”. (John Holt)
“To parents I say, above all else, don’t let your home become some terrible miniature copy of the school. No lesson plans! No quizzes! No tests! No report cards! Even leaving your kids alone would be better; at least they could figure out some things on their own. Live together, as well as you can; enjoy life together, as much as you can.” (John Holt)
“Children do not need to be made to learn to be better, told what to do or shown how. If they are given access to enough of the world, they will see clearly enough what things are truly important to themselves and to others, and they will make for themselves a better path into that world than anyone else could make for them”. (John Holt)
“What children need is not new and better curricula but access to more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to go), and to find out what they want to find out.” (John Holt)
“It is as true now as it was then that no matter what tests show, very little of what is taught in school is learned, very little of what is learned is remembered, and very little of what is remembered is used. The things we learn, remember, and use are the things we seek out or meet in the daily, serious, nonschool parts of our lives.” (John Holt)
“If you are happy with the way things are in the schools, and your children are happy and fulfilled, fine. I’m glad you are happy, and that the schools are doing what you want them to for you. But there are lots of people out there who are very unhappy, and it’s to those people that I’m offering this other choice, and saying that they don’t have to just accept what’s imposed on them. It takes a lot of determination, and some hard work, but you can teach your own!” (John Holt)
“If we taught children to speak they’d never learn”. (William Hull)
“A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one”. (Benjamin Franklin)
“Coercion or compulsion never brings about growth. It is freedom that accelerates evolution.” (Paramahansa Yogananda)
“In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: forget about it. Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream it. One day, you will glance up at your collection of Japanese literature, or trip over the solar oven you built, and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself”. (Grace Llewellyn)
“Meeting a child’s dependency needs is the key to helping that child achieve independence. And children outgrow these needs according to their own unique timetable”. (Elizabeth Baldwin)
“We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.” (Bertrand Russell)
“Part of the American myth is that people who are handed the skin of a dead sheep at graduating time think that it will keep their minds alive forever”. (John Mason Brown 1900–1969, American drama critic and author)
“Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught”. (George Savile, Marquis of Halifax 1633-1695)
“What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.” (George Bernard Shaw)
“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards”. (Mark Twain)
“Having children makes one no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist”. (Michael Levine)
“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each”. (Plato)
“Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts”. (Frank Zappa)
“Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.” (Barack Obama)
“All in all it’s just another brick the wall…” (Roger Waters – Pink Flloyd)
“Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of Heaven” (Jesus Christ)