James H. Boren Quotes

People have now a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken.

People always related to President Bush, but in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War, his numbers collapsed because people didn't feel like he handled those properly. Obama is the inverse. He was elected because he was an extraordinary guy, but the fact that he isn't ordinary has turned out to be politically damaging.

Let’s have a moratorium on press conferences …. Get off your asses and let’s do something and fix the biggest doggone crisis in the history of this country.

As one who has taught mathematics at all levels of university instruction, I am well aware of the negative attitude of so many students toward the subject. There are many reasons for this, one of them no doubt being the esoteric, dry way in which we teach the subject. We tend to overwhelm our students with formulas, definitions, theorems, and proofs, but we seldom mention the historical evolution of these facts, leaving the impression that these facts were handed to us, like the Ten Commandments, by some divine authority.

Putting aid for Harvey victims in limbo because of our own inability to handle pressing deadlines in a timely manner is not only inappropriate, but it sends the wrong message to millions of Americans in Texas and millions more who put us in Washington to do a job. We owe them better.

I am not disgruntled. I am frustrated at a lack of leadership. I am frustrated at a lack of urgency to get a head start on developing lifesaving tools for Americans. I'm frustrated at our inability to be heard as scientists. Those things frustrate me.

Teaching by precept, without example, is mighty poor teaching.

I think a lot of teachers want to talk about how to continually improve performance.

A good teacher offers practice, a bad one offers theories.

I'm a high school teacher. I'm someone who stumbles my way through, leads with my chin in some cases, leads with my heart in all cases.

I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.

The best method for a given teacher is the one which is most familiar to the teacher.

I don't think that it is necessary to rethink curricular goals. But it is certainly worth thinking about whether these goals can be reached in multiple ways.

Lectures which really teach will never be popular; lectures which are popular will never really teach.

The people who created the crisis in the first place will not be the ones that come up with a solution.

But all the love in the world won't save a sinking ship. You have to either bail or jump overboard.

For my teachers, unfortunately, certain things were, as they are for you, only tales of power

The problem with education is school.

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher.

News reports can overwhelm us. We can be appalled, we can sympathise. But what is hard to grasp is the sense that, at this moment, people are working, organising - not just at an executive level, but on the floor, in the warehouse. A man is packing a box of oral rehydration tablets; maternity kits are being prepared; education kits are being packed. And somewhere, tomorrow, those boxes will be unpacked and a child with life-threatening diarrhoea will be saved, a baby will be born in more hygienic circumstances, a girl will receive her first exercise book and her first pencil.

There is a well-established conviction that the central banks always do what is necessary to keep the system going and then afterwards you then take care of the legal aspects. In a crisis, you simply do not have time to think about such concerns for too long.

They lead only as the carved wooden figurehead leads the ship.

Many children struggle in schools... because the way they are being taught is incompatible with the way they learn.

There was a guy with mental illness in the middle of the street just yelling and hollering. I have a number that I can call - it's not 911 - to tell them, "You need to help this man get out of the street." But you have to be that person, you have to pick up the phone, you have to do it; you can't just walk by and act like they're not people. They're somebody's kid, somebody's dad, somebody's brother.