"Ultimately, works of literature are not things to be contemplated but powers to be absorbed."
-Northrop Frye, The Stubborn Structure: Essays On Criticism and Society
Showing posts with label quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quotes. Show all posts
6.09.2010
Quote of the Day: On Failing Forward
"If we think [homeschooling] is really worthwhile and we have [the opportunity and the resources], and it’s never been done before [by any of our friends/family] but we believe in it, it’s O.K. to take a chance. It’s O.K. to try, and if it doesn’t work, learn from it, adjust and keep failing forward. And if you just fail forward all the time — learn, fail, learn, fail, learn, fail — but every single time you’re making it better and better, before you know it you’re [in] great company."
Adapted from this article in the NY Times, which interviews the president and chief executive of Nvidia, a graphic chips company.
Adapted from this article in the NY Times, which interviews the president and chief executive of Nvidia, a graphic chips company.
1.31.2010
Quote of the Day: Knowing
True education should expand all the faculties of the mind:
memory, conscience, imagination, insight, intuition and brain.
When you just process information, you deny or cut off those other functions of the mind and reduce it to the brain alone, which is just simply [responding to stimuli]. The danger is unbelievable….
Columbia Teachers College held a symposium on “Knowing: How We Come to Know Things” and how important this is. Some speakers said that much that is being done in education denies these other functions of the mind and reduces them to the responsive] brain alone. They reminded us that those other functions—memory, conscience, imagination, insight, and intuition—are the functions by which we know absolutes and truths, [discern right from wrong],
and
are able
to know
God.
GenYvette Sutton
memory, conscience, imagination, insight, intuition and brain.
When you just process information, you deny or cut off those other functions of the mind and reduce it to the brain alone, which is just simply [responding to stimuli]. The danger is unbelievable….
Columbia Teachers College held a symposium on “Knowing: How We Come to Know Things” and how important this is. Some speakers said that much that is being done in education denies these other functions of the mind and reduces them to the responsive] brain alone. They reminded us that those other functions—memory, conscience, imagination, insight, and intuition—are the functions by which we know absolutes and truths, [discern right from wrong],
and
are able
to know
God.
GenYvette Sutton
11.09.2009
Recent Earworm
No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to [learn/sing about].*
We've covered three of the four so far: Sargon, Hammurabi, and Gilgamesh.
UPDATE: We've learned about Ashurnapal now, too. Another of the meanie Assyrians. At least he loved stories enough to create the very first library.
Speaking of history, here is a recent illustration by my 6 year old home scholar. Both of my girls are really loving the story of history.
*Adapted from a quote by David McCullough
We've covered three of the four so far: Sargon, Hammurabi, and Gilgamesh.
UPDATE: We've learned about Ashurnapal now, too. Another of the meanie Assyrians. At least he loved stories enough to create the very first library.
Speaking of history, here is a recent illustration by my 6 year old home scholar. Both of my girls are really loving the story of history.
*Adapted from a quote by David McCullough
11.04.2009
Quote of the Day: There Is No Alternative
"Education is about developing human beings, and human development is not mechanical or linear. It is organic and dynamic. Like all living forms, we flourish in certain conditions and shrivel in others. Great teachers, great parents and great leaders understand those conditions intuitively; poor ones don’t. The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.”
~~~Sir Ken Robinson
~~~Sir Ken Robinson
10.27.2009
Quote of the Day: Successful Parenting 101
"I won’t measure my success as a parent by whether my children share my values, but by whether they act according to their own."
---Jonathan Safran Foer, adapted from his coming book, “Eating Animals,” which will be published in November.
---Jonathan Safran Foer, adapted from his coming book, “Eating Animals,” which will be published in November.
9.29.2009
Be Good
Diana Senechal offers a review of the latest book by the author of The Bell Curve entitled Real Education and brings attention to a small but powerful arguement that is made about how teaching children to be nice is not the same as teaching them to be good.
"When we read literature and history, we begin to glean what it means to be good. We see how people with the best intentions can fail; how people struggle with conflicting desires and values and make the best choices they can; how people overcome their limitations when put to the test. From works like Antigone, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Chekhov’s short stories, we learn about selfishness, cruelty, cowardice, and confusion, as well as grace, generosity, and patience. We come to see elements of all these traits in ourselves."
She continues: "If we only teach children to be nice, they will be at a loss when life calls for more than niceness. They will be at a loss when faced with problems—intellectual, practical, or emotional—that they have to solve on their own. And when the niceness wears out, they will reach for the next thing they know, the knee-jerk reaction. Murray is right: There is a wide gulf between being nice and being good—and while no curriculum can produce goodness, an excellent curriculum can give students a vision of what it might be."
Yup. Only in my role as my children's teacher have I come to appreciate the beauty of naming truly great works of literature living books . They really do shape you in ways that is hard to describe but present without a doubt. This is just one reason that I have been reading many of the works that I neglected in my own schooldays, having choosen instead to pass the test with my friend Cliff.
The argument for being good as opposed to nice also speaks to my absolute rejection of the worth of "team learning" as a worthy skill in the classroom. Been there, been the recipient of a bad grade because I feared that speaking up when my team was producing shoddy work would have me labeled as a control freak or worse. Also been there and been taken advantage of, being encouraged to do all the work myself and handing out A's to my undeserving "teammates". I believe that many who have gone to college, especially women, have similar stories to tell.
"When we read literature and history, we begin to glean what it means to be good. We see how people with the best intentions can fail; how people struggle with conflicting desires and values and make the best choices they can; how people overcome their limitations when put to the test. From works like Antigone, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Chekhov’s short stories, we learn about selfishness, cruelty, cowardice, and confusion, as well as grace, generosity, and patience. We come to see elements of all these traits in ourselves."
She continues: "If we only teach children to be nice, they will be at a loss when life calls for more than niceness. They will be at a loss when faced with problems—intellectual, practical, or emotional—that they have to solve on their own. And when the niceness wears out, they will reach for the next thing they know, the knee-jerk reaction. Murray is right: There is a wide gulf between being nice and being good—and while no curriculum can produce goodness, an excellent curriculum can give students a vision of what it might be."
Yup. Only in my role as my children's teacher have I come to appreciate the beauty of naming truly great works of literature living books . They really do shape you in ways that is hard to describe but present without a doubt. This is just one reason that I have been reading many of the works that I neglected in my own schooldays, having choosen instead to pass the test with my friend Cliff.
The argument for being good as opposed to nice also speaks to my absolute rejection of the worth of "team learning" as a worthy skill in the classroom. Been there, been the recipient of a bad grade because I feared that speaking up when my team was producing shoddy work would have me labeled as a control freak or worse. Also been there and been taken advantage of, being encouraged to do all the work myself and handing out A's to my undeserving "teammates". I believe that many who have gone to college, especially women, have similar stories to tell.
9.01.2009
Kid Tested, Socrates Approved
"[Socrates once said,] `I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.'My fear is that... we will know everything except the fact of our own ignorance. Google has given us the world at our fingertips, but speed and ubiquity are not the same as actually knowing something"
**From an article in Educational Leadership (Sept 2009)**
(emphasis my own)
The author goes on to support what I believe to be the way many homeschoolers are already operating: "Learning would take place both in and out of school. Teachers ... would learn alongside their students, creatively adapting curriculum to their students' needs. Like any creative effort, this collective journey would include errors, lack of good information, and false starts—a process of which Socrates would approve. Because teachers are knowledgeable about the learning process, they could serve as capable guides for their students, all the while promoting the requisite 21st century thinking skills of critical reflection, empirical reasoning, collective intelligence, and metacognition."
I especially like the positive recognition of learning with your students and the granting of creative license to adapt the curriculum. These things are very present in my own homeschooling style but can sometimes be a source of stress when I view them as indicators of my shortcomings as a teacher (both in not being a certified expert at everything and not having been trained to implement the curriculum in the prescribed way). The author proposes that these things are actually strengths ~ and that Socrates would approve (Hooray for Me!)
The author concludes by encouraging us all to "embrace the new learning era of today to move beyond the false dichotomies and empty arguments of our tired education disagreements and to joyously engage with the future." Amen, Brutha.
And thanks to my mom, The Elementary School Principal, for noting this article for me.
3.24.2009
Black Like... well, Me.
"Speaking of the religiosity of racists, Maritain observes:
God is invoked... and He is invoked against the God of the spirit, of intelligence and love - excluding and hating this God. What an extraordinary spiritual phenomenon this is: people believe in God and yet do not know God. The idea is affirmed and at the same time disfigured and perverted."
---From Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
I've been doing some reading that I had been reluctant to delve into despite (or maybe because of) my marital status as it relates to wider society. This particular quote resonates with the... discomfort (?) I had been feeling about my status as a member of a certain non-denominational church I have been a part of since 2003. The recent presidential campaign season has me feeling distracted away from the divine message that one hopes to receive at such places of worship. Unfair as it may be to put those in this particular church in bed with those who spouted the most ridiculous, sometimes overtly racist views during the campaign (which continue albeit more covertly in current times), I must admit the string had already been weakened with the exit from the school our daughter attended there and then again with the replacement of a respected pastor. So I am again looking for a spiritual connection within the surrounding community and find myself drawn to the familiarity and relative moderation of my Catholic roots. While far from perfect children of God, there is something to be said for tradition. Given my tendency to make choices that go against the grain, yes ~ tradition is looking kinda good right now.
God is invoked... and He is invoked against the God of the spirit, of intelligence and love - excluding and hating this God. What an extraordinary spiritual phenomenon this is: people believe in God and yet do not know God. The idea is affirmed and at the same time disfigured and perverted."
---From Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
I've been doing some reading that I had been reluctant to delve into despite (or maybe because of) my marital status as it relates to wider society. This particular quote resonates with the... discomfort (?) I had been feeling about my status as a member of a certain non-denominational church I have been a part of since 2003. The recent presidential campaign season has me feeling distracted away from the divine message that one hopes to receive at such places of worship. Unfair as it may be to put those in this particular church in bed with those who spouted the most ridiculous, sometimes overtly racist views during the campaign (which continue albeit more covertly in current times), I must admit the string had already been weakened with the exit from the school our daughter attended there and then again with the replacement of a respected pastor. So I am again looking for a spiritual connection within the surrounding community and find myself drawn to the familiarity and relative moderation of my Catholic roots. While far from perfect children of God, there is something to be said for tradition. Given my tendency to make choices that go against the grain, yes ~ tradition is looking kinda good right now.
3.12.2009
Quote of the Day
"Delight in excellence is easily confused with snobbery by the ignorant." - Joseph Epstein in Snobbery: The American Version
3.11.2009
2.28.2009
Quote of the Day
"We parents can do them a big favor if we back off the expectation that they will all be shining stars one day, and allow them to be as ordinary as we are. There comes a time to stop planning for the perfect life and just live it, imperfect and changeable as it is." --- Frederica Mathewes-Green
I found a wonderful essay tonight about our culture's destructive obsession with youth. The quote above hit me particularly hard since I have been known to discuss grandiose expectations of myself with various psychiatric professionals over the years ;)
I found a wonderful essay tonight about our culture's destructive obsession with youth. The quote above hit me particularly hard since I have been known to discuss grandiose expectations of myself with various psychiatric professionals over the years ;)
2.22.2009
Quote of the Day
Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.
--- John Taylor Gatto, from a 2003 article in Harper's Magazine entitled "Against School"
--- John Taylor Gatto, from a 2003 article in Harper's Magazine entitled "Against School"
2.19.2009
Quote of The Day
"A unique and exquisite crystal... turns into an ordinary, boring molecule of water...when you bring it in the classroom..."
---Calvin & Hobbes
---Calvin & Hobbes
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