Quote Scrambler
Discuss Perspective
1. What is intelligence if not the ability to face problems in
an unprogrammed (creative) manner? The notion that
such a nebulous, socially-defined concept as intelligence
might be identified as a ―thing‖ with a locus in the brain
and a definite degree of heritability- and that it might be
measured as a single number, thus permitting a unilinear
ranking of people according to the amount they possess,
is a principal error, … one that has reverberated
throughout the country and has affected millions of lives. –
Stephen Jay Gould
Teach these boys
2. Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys
and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are
wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out
everything else. You can only form the minds of
reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will
ever be of any service to them. –Charles
Dickens, ―Hard Times‖
3. The best learning environment is like a good
cafeteria. It not only affords the essential staples
but also offers a large variety of choices to satisfy
individual tastes. This allows children to discover
their natural interests, proclivities, and special
talents. –Jenson
4. The profit of education is the ability it gives to
make distinctions that penetrate below the
surface…One knows that there is a difference
between sound and sense between what is
emphatic and what is distinctive, between what is
conspicuous and what is important. –John
Dewey
5. Americans hold the notion that good teaching
comes through artful and spontaneous
interactions with students during lessons… Such
views minimize the importance of planning
increasingly Effective lessons and lend credence
to the folk belief that good teachers are born, not
made. Our biggest long-term problem is not how
we teach not but that we have no way of getting
better. –Stigler & Hiebert
6. In the classroom, time is a fixed resource. If
children are organized in cooperative learning
groups studying grade level material for the
majority of their school day, they will have time to
do little else. They will not have time to learn
anything new to them.
--Nancy Robinson
7. The curriculum of a subject should be determined by the
most fundamental understanding that can be achieved of
the underlying principals that give structure to a
subject…Teaching topics skills without
subject…Teaching specific topics or skills without making
clear their context in the broader fundamental structure of
a field of knowledge is uneconomical…An understanding
of fundamental principles and ideas appears to be the
main road to adequate transfer of training. To understand
something as a specific instance of a more general case-
which is what understanding a more fundamental
structure means—is to have learned not only a specific
thing but also a model for understanding other things like
it that one may encounter. –Jerome Bruner
8. Facts are complex things which have
connections and logical implications which reach
beyond themselves. And the mental weaving of
these connections is what education and critical
thinking is fundamentally about. Indeed, so-
called ―higher order‖ learning is itself predicated
on having this broad understanding of how
certain facts and information are connected or
related to something else. –J.D. McPeck
9. IQ is positively correlated with just about all
major measurements of success and well-being:
occupational status, socioeconomic status,
income, marital stability, even good health and
life expectancy. The correlations tell us the U.S.
is very much a meritocracy, and the kind of
―merit‖ that matters most is intelligence. –D.
Seligman
firm grounding in the arts teaches practical
10. A firm grounding in the arts teaches practical
skills and such characteristics as self-discipline
and critical thinking. The arts naturally embrace
paradox and ambiguity, to study them is to learn
flexible thinking. Those who have trained in an
art form are more likely not only to grasp the
nuances in real life, say the experts, but also to
persevere in finding novel solutions to everyday
problems. –Susan Gains, ―The Art of Living‖
11. Good teachers are passionate about ideas,
learning, and their relationship with students…
These teachers did more than teach to set
standards or use approved techniques. Their
classroom relationships featured ―interest,
enthusiasm, inquiry, excitement, discovery, risk
taking and fun.‖ Their cognitive scaffolding of
concepts and teaching strategies was ―held
together with emotional bonds.‖ –P. Woods and
B. Jeffrey, ―Teachable Moments‖
12. The belief that the reason a person goes to school is to
get a good job and earn more money as an adult has
robbed our society of two important values. First of all, it
deprives young people of the feeling that what they are
doing now is important. All the rewards are seen to be
somewhere in the future. Secondly, it deprives society of
the understanding that learning has value in itself and not
just as a saleable commodity. This greatly reduces the
range of knowledge that is considered worth having, and
creates a population of narrowly-educated citizens. –B.B.
Tye
13. Finding the right answer is important, of course.
But more important is developing the ability to
see that problems have multiple solutions, that
getting from X to Y demands basic skills and
mental agility, imagination, persistence, patience.
–Mary Hatwood Futrell