Frank McCourt Quotes

The kids have got their iPads, but they prefer to get out climbing trees and coming out with me. That's the kind of learning I want them to have: experiences.

There is no part of the country where in the summer you cannot get a sufficient supply of the best specimens. Teach your children to bring them in for themselves. Take your text from the brooks, not from the booksellers.

Crucial to science education is hands-on involvement: showing, not just telling; real experiments and field trips and not just 'virtual reality.'

Almost every day, instead of going to school, I made for the fields, where I spent my day.

It has always seemed to me that a love of natural objects, and the depth, as well as exuberance and refinement of mind, produced by an intelligent delight in scenery, are elements of the first importance in the education of the young.

The bits I most remember about my school days are those that took place outside the classroom, as we were taken on countless theatre visits and trips to places of interest.

When I was a schoolkid, I went to Castleton quite a few times. We'd be there studying rocks, going down these big hills. It was a great place!

It's fun to get out in the field. I really enjoy that. It's fun creating.

It was probably my parents who inspired me most. My father was a scientist and answered my scientific questions, while my mother took me on walks and showed me birds and plants. She also took me out at night and showed me the constellations and the aurora.

I don't like games. You're robbing the precious time of children to be children. They need to be in touch with the real world more.

I went to an inner-city school in Buffalo. We had no money. But our teachers believed in hands-on active learning - there was a mandatory science fair, which was critical.

What I want to do with my filmmaking is help kids experience the truth and wisdom of nature no matter where they are, whether or not they have the opportunity to go to a national park.

Education is very important, and the botanical garden is the place to do that. I grew up in a semi-rural area and learned from that being my playground.

My mom and dad decided to homeschool us - I'm one of eight - because they really wanted us to be outside and learn some other fundamentals instead of it being school all day in a classroom.

In addition to a well-funded school system, we need to encourage and exploit innovative approaches for learning outside the classroom.

I went to a school for experiential learning all around the city of Los Angeles. We went on at least 2 field trips a week, and I went there for 7 years, so I have seen a lot of this city.

That which we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.

Make the boy interested in natural history if you can; it is better than games; they encourage it in some schools.

That's the way to get young people. Once they see there are wonderful things to hunt for, to rediscover a species that was thought to be extinct or is extremely rare, to be the first to see a nest, to discover a new species unsuspected close to your home - these are things, I think, with a little education and excitement and the right kind of natural history would actually start a movement that makes going back to nature a profitable adventure.

It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book.

I'm sure there was an educational angle to the trips (I think one was to the Ulster Museum) but it was the fun and banter I had with my friends I remember the most.

Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, water lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education.

Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it; People become builders by building and instrumentalists by playing instruments. Similarily, we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.

I'm pretty outdoorsy. My family used to live in the hills in the middle of nowhere pretty much. We literally used to have bow and arrows and air rifles and were throwing knives.

I saw a poet chase a butterfly in a meadow. He put his net on a bench where a boy sat reading a book. It's a misfortune that it is usually the other way round.