Esperanza Spalding Quotes

Schools still operate as if all knowledge is contained in books, and as if the salient points in books must be stored in each human brain - to be used when needed. The political and financial powers controlling schools decide what these salient points are.

In most schools, we measure children on what they know. By and large, they have to memorize the content of whatever test is coming up. Because measuring the results of rote learning is easy, rote prevails. What kids know is just not important in comparison with whether they can think.

We have placed more emphasis on grades and school ranking than on genuine education.

He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater detterent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.

All subjects are the same. I memorize notes for a test, spew it, ace it, then forget it. What makes this scary for the future of our country is that I'm in the tip-top percentile on every standardized test. I'm a model student with a very crappy attitude about learning.

I believe primary and secondary education is the bedrock of any sustainable society.

Traditional education is based on facts and figures and passing tests - not on a comprehension of the material and its application to your life.

For any reporter, education is a topic where everything else - money, politics, et cetera - intersects. I have four kids in K through 12, so I'm knee-deep in it. I'm really interested in the philosophy behind it all. Should you just memorize your multiplication tables, or should you understand the concept behind them?

An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home.

Our education system is increasingly embracing a black-and-white way of thinking, in which 'learning' and 'play' are diametrically opposed. 'Learning' is the serious stuff that happens inside a classroom and can be measured via multiple choice questions and a No. 2 pencil. 'Play' is frivolous, fun, and worst of all, optional.

Arbitrary benchmarks cheat kids out of a fulfilling education.

I had a great education. From kindergarten to John Dewey High School in Coney Island, I am public-school educated.

We've become so accustomed to teaching to the tests that we've forgotten about a child's joy of discovery.

We are taught words, not ideas.

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.

The educational system is pretty much geared to passing the next exam. You're educated to pass tests and not to understand.

The problem I have with schools is, people are taught, 'This is how you do this.' They're not taught about why you do this.

We in universities are not in the democracy business. What we do, when we're doing it, is teach and learn.

If there's one thing that 'No Child Left Behind' has proven, it's that more academics don't make for smarter children - or even higher test scores. And yet we somehow refuse to accept this reality.

In our education system, we are taught to munch figures and remember them for lifetime. But does it help? We are not taught how to make decisions.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

Sciences may be learned by rote, but wisdom not.

Our approach to education has remained largely unchanged since the Renaissance: From middle school through college, most teaching is done by an instructor lecturing to a room full of students, only some of them paying attention.

The classroom should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it.

They don't like thinking in medical school. They memorize - that's all they want you to do. You must not think.