Nat Hentoff Quotes

I was home schooled in high school but was definitely the nerd in middle school. I was in three academic clubs, a huge book worm, and the teacher's pet. I was kind of an easy target for bullies.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

I wonder if liberal kids call liberal talk shows and ask how to get along in a conservative teacher's class? No. No. It doesn't happen, 'cause there's no thought of getting along.

Proper history teaching is being crushed under the weight of play-based pedagogy which infantilises children, teachers and our culture.

Most Indians go into education. Their parents just push them into education like parents in Australia push them into sports.

I had to get good grades and do well in school - my mother was an assistant principal and my father was a teacher - and they took this very seriously.

I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they're qualified to teach them at home. Of course, some parents are smarter than some teachers, but in the main I see home-schooling as misguided foolishness.

In a home school, the kid does 95% of the work. But in a school system, since it's an indoctrination system, a teacher has to do 95% of the work.

It's very hypocritical to constantly say, 'We want to keep our kids close,' then send them home with so much homework that family time becomes nonexistent.

Boarding school is a wicked thing.

The teacher is commodified, the school is a shop, the subjects are consumer goods. To read, to think, to reflect, isn't a question of want, it's a question of need.

When I look back now I realize I was such an obnoxious kid but, you know, I went to schools like you, like a public school in New York so compared to the anarchy that was going on there, they really wouldn't - I wasn't like a bad kid. I saw people come in and punch the teachers.

I went to a very academically competitive high school. So I was always quite studious and quiet, just to keep up with the other geniuses who were in my school.

No matter how much you like your local school teacher, he or she is a government agent.

The Chinese are brought up to believe that you should be silent in class. The teacher speaks, and you just listen and absorb what they say.

Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.

I remember the mentoring experiences of some teachers that I had, like a second term home room teacher in public school that really was very helpful to me.

I didn't like school at all. I never liked the seven different classes system. I liked having just one, like in elementary school - less disruption. I liked history. I failed math and science and gave those teachers a hard time.

I was raised by a single mother, and she felt the Japanese education system, albeit wonderful, keeps you in a certain range. You have to be better than this level but below this level.

They're my instructors, and every parent will understand that.

I passed the 11-plus and went up to the senior school, where my two older sisters had already gone. I was in the 'A' stream, but in the third year, they asked me to give up Latin; no one had ever got 7 per cent before.

I grew up in an environment that promoted a very fixed mindset. It was an era that worshipped IQ and thought that your IQ was the most important thing in determining your future. My sixth-grade teacher even seated us around the room in IQ order.

My parents were educated in the Turkish system and went straight from high school to medical school; my mom, who had skipped a grade, was dissecting corpses at age seventeen. Growing up in America, I think I envied my parents' education. By comparison, everything I did in school seemed so sort of low-stakes and infantilizing.

People are still programmed to think that if your child doesn't get straight As, get A-levels and go to a Russell Group university, that somehow they are not going to achieve in life. I think that's sad.

THE TEACHER AS A NECESSARY EVIL. Let us have as few people as possible between the productive minds and the hungry and recipient minds! The middlemen almost unconsciously adulterate the food which they supply. It is because of teachers that so little is learned, and that so badly.