This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
And so we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.
Education | Listening | Motives | Virtue | Virtue | Child | Teacher |
Marva Collins, born Marva Delores Nettles
I'm a teacher. A teacher is someone who leads. There is no magic here. I do not walk on water. I do not part the sea. I just love children.
Mary Pipher, aka Mary Elizabeth Pipher or Mary Bray Pipher
I read of a Buddhist teacher who developed Alzheimer's. He had retired from teaching because his memory was unreliable, but he made one exception for a reunion of his former students. When he walked onto the stage, he forgot everything, even where he was and why. However, he was a skilled Buddhist and he simply began sharing his feelings with the crowd. He said, "I am anxious. I feel stupid. I feel scared and dumb. I am worried that I am wasting everyone's time. I am fearful. I am embarrassing myself." After a few minutes of this, he remembered his talk and proceeded without apology. The students were deeply moved, not only by his wise teachings, but also by how he handled his failings.
Marva Collins, born Marva Delores Nettles
Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
Thus I define religion as the awareness – accompanied by the emotions and determined by them – of dependence from something, defined by the tradition, which at the given stage of cultural evolution of man exceeds his cognitive capabilities; this awareness then causes in man, under the action of emotions and tradition, volitive states leading to an endeavor to change somehow the supposed dependence or at least perform some influence on what the man of given cultural stage considers to be the cause of the dependence.
Action | Awareness | Cause | Change | Dependence | Emotions | Evolution | Influence | Man | Religion | Awareness |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say,
Mikhail Gorbachev, fully Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
A lecture has been well described as the process whereby the notes of the teacher become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either.
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking an analysis yourself.
Nature | Question | Respect | Thinking | Will | Work | Respect | Trouble | Teacher |
Musonius, fully Gaius Musonnius Rufus NULL
There is no sense in seeking many proofs for each point, but rather cogent and lucid ones. The teacher should rather touch upon each point just enough to penetrate the intellect of his listener with persuasive arguments that cannot easily be refuted. Most important of all is for him to show himself to act consistently with the wise words he speaks.
Enough | Important | Sense | Wise | Words | Intellect | Teacher |
Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner
In an attempt to instill students with these qualities and behaviors, a teacher adhering to the inquiry method in pedagogy must behave very differently from a traditional teacher. Postman and Weingartner suggest that inquiry teachers have the following characteristics : They avoid telling students what they "ought to know". They talk to students mostly by questioning, and especially by asking divergent questions. They do not accept short, simple answers to questions. They encourage students to interact directly with one another, and avoid judging what is said in student interactions. They do not summarize students' discussion. They do not plan the exact direction of their lessons in advance, and allow it to develop in response to students' interests. Their lessons pose problems to students. They gauge their success by change in students' inquiry behaviors (with the above characteristics of "good learners" as a goal).
Change | Inquiry | Method | Plan | Problems | Qualities | Success | Following | Teacher |
The economic dependence of women is perhaps the greatest injustice that has been done to us, and has worked the greatest injury to the race.
Dependence | Injustice | Injustice |
All creatures are united to God alone in an immediate union. They depend essentially and directly upon Him. Being all alike equally impotent, they cannot be in reciprocal dependence upon one another.
Dependence | God | God |
I have been told by the third grade teacher that my daughter Poppet is reading at middle school level. Yet if I leave Poppet a note in block letters telling her to feed the dogs I will come home to find the dogs have been ... given a swim in the above-ground pool, dressed in tutus, provided with hair weaves. What I will not find is that the dogs have been fed. 'I thought you wanted me to free the dogs,' says Poppet whose school district is not spending quite what D.C.'s is, thanks to voter rejection of the last school bond referendum.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Suffering is a good teacher to those who are quick and willing to learn from it. But it becomes a tyrant to those who resist and resent.
If outer events bring him to a position where he can bear them no longer and force him to cry out to the higher power in helplessness for relief or if inner feelings bring humiliation and recognition of his dependence on that power, this crushing of the ego may open the door to grace.
Dependence | Ego | Events | Feelings | Force | Position | Power |
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
Absolute faith is the dependence of the experience of nonbeing on the experience on being and the dependence of the experience of meaninglessness on the experience of meaning. Even in the state of despair one has enough being to make despair possible.
Dependence | Despair | Enough | Experience | Faith |
There is only one difference between teacher and disciple: the former is slightly less afraid than the latter.
The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is him/herself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.
Teacher |