Sydney J. Harris Quotes

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.

Education is all a matter of building bridges.

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.

Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn. The real teacher, in fact, lets nothing else be learned than learning. His conduct, therefore, often produces the impression that we properly learn nothing from him, if by "learning" we now suddenly understand merely the procurement of useful information.

The mere imparting of information is not education.

We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.

The idea that teaching is somehow the delivery of the goods is such a misunderstanding of what actually goes on.

In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.

The role of the educator is one of tranquil possession of certitude in regard to the teaching of not only contents but also of 'correct thinking.'

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

Education is the methodical creation of the habit of thinking.

The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.

Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.

It would be better, in a way, if any adults present were completely uneducated. There is nothing children like more than passing on information they have just discovered to people who may not already have it - an elderly grandmother, for instance.

The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts, but learning how to make facts live.

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn.

In teaching, regard must be had to the faculties possessed by the pupil. In childhood, memory; in youth, the understanding; in mature life, the reason is the predominating faculty.

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

I don’t believe curriculums are the key to education, I believe teachers are.

I still believe that education is about provoking some kind of original, creative thought.

Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.

What is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn?

My dad took me to a high school basketball game and this very, very famous coach in Michigan, by the name of Lofton Greene - he was a guy that my dad was familiar with. He was from our hometown. And I watched the game and I said I didn't see this guy doing a lot of coaching. And my dad told me, well, it's just like a teacher - which he was - he said if you do a good job teaching during the week, when they take the test on Friday, that's not the time you have to do a lot of demonstrative things.

Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous.