Alice Oswald Quotes

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.

I am absent altogether too much to be a suitable instructor for a law-student. When a man has reached the age that Mr. Widner has,and has already been doing for himself, my judgment is, that he reads the books for himself without an instructor. That is precisely the way I came to the law.

Too often we see that teachers and educational administrators feel threatened by self-organized learning. They, therefore, think it is not learning at all.

I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher.

When you home study, you get a better education. I basically got to teach myself. Being naturally able to make my own opinions about the schoolwork I had to deal with, instead of being instructed under the tutelage of the teacher, was really nice academically.

My attitude toward graduate students was different, I must say. I used graduate students as colleagues: I gave them the best problems to work on, and I encouraged them.

Find a good teacher, as I found for my sons. I feel the worst thing you can do is to try and teach your own children yourself, because there is a natural rebellion that occurs.

I have learned that, although I am a good teacher, I am a much better student, and I was blessed to learn valuable lessons from my students on a daily basis. They taught me the importance of teaching to a student - and not to a test.

The best teachers, one hopes, don't shout at their students - because they are skilled at wooing as well as demanding the best efforts of others. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, this wooing was a sufficiently fine art in itself to be the central focus of education.

All learning is in the learner, not in the teacher.

I have always felt that the true text-book for the pupil is his teacher

we have not yet developed a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination.

It's the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.

During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.

Those who have a desire to teach while coming to learn should not pose as disciples; they must come as teachers.

A true teacher doesn't teach you to think like him, but to think without him.

Books are absent teachers.

Wherever there are beginners and experts, old and young, there is some kind of learning going on, some kind of teaching. We are all pupils and we are all teachers.

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.

Education is what you must acquire without any interference from your schooling.

We think we learn from teachers, and we sometimes do. But the teachers are not always to be found in school or in great laboratories. Sometimes what we learn depends upon our own powers of insight.

I like to remind teachers that even though they're all overwhelmed and overloaded, and it's easy to get burned out, it really is about the kids. It only takes one good teacher to change a life - one time, and one book. That's what happened when I was a kid. I had one good teacher that came in at the right time and turned me into a writer. So never lose sight - you could be that teacher.

Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.

All education must be self-education.

He that teaches us anything which we knew not before is undoubtedly to be reverenced as a master.