Paulo Freire Quotes

The mere imparting of information is not education.

Teachers may think they are stuffing minds, but all they are ever affecting is the memory. Nothing can ever be forced into anyone's mind except by brainwashing, which is the very opposite of genuine teaching.

The things taught in schools & colleges are not an education but the means of education.

Attempt to teach the young but little at a time; this will be easier to impart, easier to receive, and surer to be retained.

Reading and writing, arithmetic and grammar do not constitute education, any more than a knife, fork and spoon constitute a dinner.

A reader does not suddenly comprehend what is being read or studied, in a snap, miraculously. Comprehension needs to be worked forged, by those who read and study; as subjects of the action, they must seek to employ appropriate instruments in order to carry out the task. For this very reason, reading and studying form a challenging task, one requiring patience and perseverance.

You know, I want to teach, but I don’t want to read?

We can teach only if we are willing to learn.

The purpose of adult education is to help them to learn, not to teach them all you know and thus stop them from learning.

The truth of the matter is that about 99 percent of teaching is making the students feel interestedin the material. Then the other 1 percent has to do with your methods. And that's not just true of languages. It's true of every subject.

Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education.

School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

A good teacher teaches people how to see, not what to see.

Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.

In teaching it is the method and not the content that is the message.

It is safer to learn than teach; and who conceals his opinion has nothing to answer for.

A pedant holds more to instruct us with what he knows, than of what we are ignorant.

Nothing is better for my playing than teaching because when you teach, you have to think and you have to listen what other people do. And then all of a sudden, you play yourself and then you say, my goodness, I don't need a teacher. I'm my own teacher. Then I can react to what I'm doing immediately. It really improves.

We never read without profit if with the pen or pencil in our hand we mark such ideas as strike us by their novelty, or correct those we already possess.

True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

It was never factually true that young people learn to read or do arithmetic primarily by being taught these things. These things are learned, but not really taught at all. Over-teaching interferes with learning, although the few who survive it may well come to imagine it was by an act of teaching.

Reading is more important than writing.

Great men in teaching weak men to reflect have set them on the road to error.

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.