Michael Gurian Quotes

There isn't a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as there are fingerprints.

When you're too robotic and scripted, the students tune you out. So I always tried to use different learning modalities - kinesthetic, auditory, visual, whatever might bring learning to life.

In other words, if a teacher only teaches in one way, then they conclude that the kids who can't learn well that way don't have the ability, when, in fact, it may be that the way the teacher's teaching is not a particularly good match to the way those kids learn.

They change. They're different. There are no two alike, that's the miracle of it. But if they have something to teach the students. You can see them writing during the show.

Everyone will tell you how rigid I am, but a teacher has to be flexible. You can't cut the student to your cloth; you have to cut yourself to theirs.

We need to have an educational system that's able to embrace all sorts of minds, and where a student doesn't have to fit into a certain mold of learning.

I did get a degree in special education.

Every child needs to become literate in one or more languages, and every child should become comfortable in the major scholarly disciplines - historical, scientific, mathematical, and artistic-humanistic thinking. Beyond that, I am not in favour of a uniform system. I think there should be some choices.

Being home-schooled, you really get to explore your hobbies, what you want to do for a living.

Definitely, in any teaching situation, there are the clueless students; then there are the ones who get it a little quicker.

When we teach in pluralistic ways, there are two wonderful dividends. First of all, we reach more students, because some learn best through stories, some through works of art, some through role play etc. Second of all, we show what it is like really to understand something.

Since we all have different cognitive profiles, educators should take those individual differences very seriously.

The true teachers and educators are not those who have learned pedagogy as the science of dealing with children, but those in whom pedagogy has awakened through understanding the human being.

School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.

In school, no one teaches you to look for things that are right for you.

A school that believes in the power of knowledge and learning will have reading at its core.

I don't want people to think there's one right way to eat.

A one-size-fits-all lecture is not the way to go about education.

Everybody has different ways of playing the game.

We have to move back to the idea that education isn't about teaching people to bow to rigid rules. That's not what democracy is about.

Not everything works for everybody.

Everything doesn't work for everybody.

When a child is thriving, there is no reason to spend time assessing intelligences. But when a child is NOT thriving - in school or at home - that is the time to apply the lens of multiple intelligences and see whether one can find ways to help the child thrive in different environments.

The number one goal of teachers should be to help students learn how to learn.

A practice that is suitable for one person is not necessarily suitable for someone else, and a practice that is appropriate for one person at one time is not necessarily appropriate for that same person at another time. Buddha did not expect us to put all his teachings into practice right away--they are intended for a great variety of practitioners of different levels and dispositions.