John Dewey Quotes

The best school in the world will scarcely save a boy who hates the school and the purpose it serves and the society that created it.

If I have a talent for making some fourth-grader who hates school and reading to hate it a little less, then I have to do the most with what I've been issued.

I started thinking about my relationship with my students; I'm this guy who comes in from book - and movie - land and descends on angel wings into their classroom.

The most valuable aid I have found in teaching is to remember my own experiences as a student.

I can't tell you how many people say they were turned off from science because of a science teacher that completely sucked out all the inspiration and enthusiasm they had for the course.

Students Are Not Widgets. Schools Are Not Factories.

In schools, if you go to teach kids with less interest in music the nuances of music, they feel deviated, as it is very technical. But teaching them songs, to begin with, creates a natural desire in them to know the other country, their eating habits, the way they dress up, how they look, and other things.

...suddenly you hit on something that the student really responds to, you can see the eyes open and the complexion change. The life possibility has opened there. All you can say to yourself is, "I hope this child hangs on to that."

During my school visits, I really enjoy the feedback I get from them much more than anything I might tell say to them.

If we think back through our own lives, the subjects that you liked best in school almost certainly were taught by the teachers you liked best. And the teacher you liked best was the teacher who cared about the subject she taught.

Kids drop out of school mostly because school is boring and not particularly relevant.

I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up.

A primary reason for my success in the classroom was that I couldn't forget that schooling was changing me and separating me from the life I enjoyed before becoming a student.

I enjoyed teaching. I liked the students. Having to formulate my ideas about literature made them clearer. I did not particularly enjoy the more bureaucratic aspects of the job. However, if you are teaching fervently, your energy and time are used up at a great rate.

I was a good student in the subjects that I wanted to be good in. The curriculum in my section was excellent.

What is learned in high school, or for that matter anywhere at all, depends far less on what is taught than on what one actually experiences in the place.

Teachers should be very careful not to spoil their pupils' taste for poetry for all time by making it a task and an imposition.

I have been in schools around the country, and I have written on education for years. Once, I was once doing a profile on Justice William Brennan and I was in his chambers, and Brennan asked, "How do we get the words of the Bill of Rights into the lives of the students?" Well, it is not difficult. You tell them stories.

You can go to a history class with one teacher and want to stick a pencil in your throat, and then go to another teacher who is able to contextualize it or deliver the message in a way that you're riveted.

I love talking to all the kids, and have enjoyed the enthusiasm and response from their teachers as well.

Education is not an affair of 'telling' and being told, but an active and constructive process.

The greatest teachers are the ones that turn a B student into an A student, or a failing student into a B student.

One might as well say he has sold when no one has bought as to say he has taught when no one has learned.

We never educate directly, but indirectly by means of the environment. Whether we permit chance environments to do the work, or whether we design environments for the purpose makes a great difference.

The only thing that happens when I'm teaching is that I hope there are some students out there in the class who will ask questions.