I see no advantage to the
graphical user interface.
Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft, 1984
There is no reason for any
individual to have a
computer in their home.
Ken Olsen, president and founder of
Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
I think there is a world
market for maybe five
computers.
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
What can be more palpably
absurd than the prospect held
out of locomotives traveling
twice as fast as stagecoaches?
The Quarterly Review, England, 1825
This “telephone” has too many
shortcomings to be seriously
considered as a means of
communication. The device is
inherently of no value.
Western Union internal memo, 1876
The horse is here to stay but the
automobile is only a novelty, a fad,
a passing fancy.
President of the Michigan Savings Bank
advising Horace Racham (Henry Ford’s
lawyer) not to invest in the Ford Motor Co.,
1903
While television may be theoretically
feasible, commercially and financially I
consider it an impossibility, a
development of which we need waste
little time dreaming.
Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer, 1926
• There is not the slightest
indication that nuclear energy
will ever be attainable. It would
mean that the atom would have
to be shattered at will.
• Albert Einstein, 1932
Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which
the new materials (children) are to be shaped
and fashioned in order to meet the various
demands of life. The specifications for
manufacturing come from the demands of the
20th century civilization, and it is the business
of the school to build its pupils according to
the specifications laid down.
William J. Harris, influential late 19th century
educator
The teacher must remain the key…Debates
over educational policy are moot if the
primary agents of instruction are incapable of
performing their functions well. No
microcomputer will replace them, no
television system will clone and distribute
them, no scripted lessons will direct and
control them, no voucher system will bypass
them.
Lee Shulman, 1996
The principalship is the loneliest
occupation I've ever had.
Mike Chappel, Principal, Zebulon Elementary
School, Zebulon, North Carolina.
It is easier to change the location
of a cemetery than it is to
change a school curriculum.
Woodrow Wilson
There is a great danger in the present day
lest science- teaching should
degenerate into the accumulation of
disconnected facts and unexplained
formulae, which burden the memory
without cultivating the understanding.
J. D. Everett, 1873
This is the first time in the history of
education-certainly in this century-
where the students are better at the
delivery system than the teachers. That
has profound implications, not the least
of which is the power balance in the
classroom.
Dr. Barry Munitz, president and CEO of The J.
Paul Getty Trust
God didn’t create self-contained
classrooms, fifty-minute periods,
and subjects taught in isolation.
We did - because we find working
alone safer than and preferable to
working together.
Barth 1991
To put it as succinctly as possible, if you
want to change and improve the climate
and outcomes of schooling both for
students and teachers, there are
features of the school culture that have
to be changed, and if they are not
changed, your well-intentioned efforts
will be defeated.
Seymour Sarason, 1996
Schools are trapped by a leadership
dilemma: they require skilled,
effective principals in order to
outgrow their utter dependence on
those principals.
Tom Donahoe, 1993
Without a competent caring individual in the
principal’s position, the task of school reform
is very difficult. Reform can be initiated from
outside the school or stimulated from within.
But in the end, it is the principal who
implements and sustains the changes
through the inevitable roller coaster of
euphoria and setbacks.
Louis Gerstner, 1994
The mediocre teacher tells. The
good teacher explains. The
superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires.
William A. Ward
Computers in classrooms are the filmstrips of
the 1990s. We loved them because we didn’t
have to think for an hour, teachers loved
them because they didn’t have to teach, and
parents loved them because it showed their
schools were high-tech. But no learning
happened.
Clifford Stoll
We receive 3 educations: one from
our parents, one from our
schoolmaster, and one from the
world. The third contradicts all the
first two teach us.
Baron de Montesquieu
I mean when in the real world am
I ever gonna need chemistry or
history or math or…the English
language?
Buffy, the Vampire Slayer
Examinations are formidable
even to the best prepared, for
the greatest fool may ask more
than the wisest man can
answer.
C. C. Colton, Lacon: Reflections, No. 322.
Nothing in education is so
astonishing as the amount of
ignorance it accumulates in the
form of inert facts.
Henry Brooks Adams (1828-1918) U.S.
historian and writer
I have never let my
schooling interfere with my
education.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer.