Paulo Freire Quotes

Some teachers teach for others to learn. That's not me. Some teachers teach for others to accomplish. That is me.

A good teacher feels his way, looking for response.

More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given

To be a teacher does not mean simply to affirm that such a thing is so, or to deliver a lecture, etc.

You know, master classes are essentially extended Q&As. That's how I always approach them. I don't mean to downplay it. It's just that I never fancy myself as someone who is taking a class. 'Master class' insinuates a teacher, and I'm not one.

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.

And in my classes, I will talk most of the time, and you will listen most of the time. Because you may be smart, but I've been smart longer.

I would say this to my students all the time, it's about 30% you as the teacher and 70% about them. They tend to think that their role is to be the baby bird in a nest and you're going to feed them? They're going to feed themselves, or they're going to starve.

The teaching fellow establishes the atmosphere of a class in the first few meetings. I have found that students appreciate having the ground rules clearly defined from the start.

So what does a good teacher do? Create tension - but just the right amount.

I started thinking about my relationship with my students; I'm this guy who comes in from book - and movie - land and descends on angel wings into their classroom.

I think a lot of teachers feel like they're teaching to a test. Our response is you teach to a student, you really teach to the kid.

I'm a craftsman type of teacher. I don't like the thematic type of teaching that takes place in a lot of colleges.

Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching. There are no uneducated people; only most people are educated wrong. The true task of culture today is not a task of expansion, but of selection-and-rejection. The educationist must find a creed and teach it.

Good teachers join self and subject and students in the fabric of life.

Of all the excellent teachers of college English whom I have known I have never discovered one who knew precisely what he was doing. Therein have lain their power and their charm.

The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.

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

Teachers often make the mistake of thinking they're the boss of the class; they're not. The boss of the class is sitting down there somewhere.

What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.

School is established, not in order that it should be convenient for the children to study, but that teachers should be able to teach in comfort. The children's conversations, motion, merriment are not convenient for the teacher, and so in the schools, which are built on the plan of prisons, are prohibited.

When you study great teachers... you will learn much more from their caring and hard work than from their style.

The student is infinitely more important than the subject matter.

To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.

A great teacher is one who realizes that he himself is also a student and whose goal is not dictate the answers, but to stimulate his students' creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.