David Brooks Quotes

The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home.

America's future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what he is taught; hence we must watch what we teach, and how we live.

Learning can take place in the backyard if there is a human being there who cares about the child. Before learning computers, children should learn to read first. They should sit around the dinner table and hear what their parents have to say and think.

No, my step-daughter just opened a theatre school for children, I have another daughter who works in the record industry and another who is going back to collage and I have two little ones at home.

Give me a child for the first 7 years, and you may do what you like with him afterwards.

I really love teaching; I was actually studying to be a preschool teacher.

Home is a child's first and most important classroom.

We put [young children] into kindergarten where their reasoning powers are ruined; or, if we can afford it, we buy Montessori outfits that were invented for semi-imbeciles in Italian slums; or we send them to outdoor schools and give them prizes for sleeping.

School is no place of education for any children whatever till their minds are well put in action. This is the work which has to be done at home, and which may be done in all homes where the mother is a sensible woman.

Everyone goes to rotten schools when they're kids, don't they?

It will help at every state along the road to learning. For the pre-school years we will help needy children become aware of the excitement of learning.

The better class of Briton likes to send his children away to school until they're old and intelligent enough to come home again. Then they're too old and intelligent to want to.

The first duty of the educator, whether he is involved with the newborn infant or the older child, is to recognize the human personality of the young being and respect it.

They will not stop me, I will get my education, if it is in home, school or any place

If kids come to us from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important.

For every individual who gets killed, someone should build a school or teach a child. We really need to balance things with positivity.

The best way to improve the American workforce in the 21st century is to invest in early childhood education, to ensure that even the most disadvantaged children have the opportunity to succeed along side their more advantaged peers

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and enlarge his talents.

I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be too cruel.

The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike.

And those handmade presents that children often bring home from school: They have so much value! The value is that the child put whatever he or she could into making them. The way we parents respond to the giving of such gifts is very important. To the child the gift is really self, and they want so much for their selves to be acceptable, to be loved.

When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.

The education of even a small child, therefore, does not aim at preparing him for school, but for life.

How many more years will our educators continue to lecture us on the evils of whipping children until they bring home high grades? Year after year we listen to these fellows tell us that it is not the grade that counts but the development of the child's personality. After the lecture they go back to all the best schools and reject our children because they have C averages.

I trust the time is coming, when the occupation of an instructer [sic] to children will be deemed the most honorable of human employment. If it is a drudgery to teach these little ones, then it is the duty of men to bear a part of that burthen; if it is a privilege and an honor, then we generously invite them to share that honor and privilege with us.