A. Bartlett Giamatti Quotes

Arts education must be part of our education solution because it works for all students.

I'm not a policy oriented person. I'm constrained to what I study. But educational policy has not yet taken adequate note of the whole child. Kids are not just their IQ or standardized test scores. It matters whether or not they show up, how hard they work.

I worked among many famous philosophers, and I tried to observe how they treated students. I knew which ones I wanted to be like, and which ones I didn't.

The only solution to the education system is to find yourself.

I did all sorts of things that you wouldn't normally find on an engineer's docket, but it made an educated person out of me.

...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."

The student is to read history actively and not passively.

We do our universities a disservice when we brand them as a lost cause. There are some frightfully honest students out there, and when their questions are respectfully dealt with, many admit their vulnerability.

Is not, indeed, every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoof?

Tis not the food, but the content, That makes the table's merriment.

Now and then I'll get a student who asks a question that puts me up against the wall and maybe by the end of the semester I can begin to deal with the question.

How many students ... were rendered callous to ideas, and how many lost the impetus to learn because of the way in which learning was experienced by them?

I am a student of whoever I can learn from.

For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?

Much of the material presented in schools strikes students as alien, if not pointless.

There's not a sense that the person who is waiting on the table is somehow a lesser person that the person who is eating in the restaurant.

Is it life, I ask, is it even prudence, To bore thyself and bore the students?

Keep a good table and attend to the ladies.

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.

Students were taught by doing.

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.

Before I can effectively discipline students, I have to earn their friendship and respect.

Do all your eating at a table.

The ideal student would be one who was not working for grades but was working because he was interested in the work and not trying to compete with fellow students.