Individualized Instruction Quotes

I'd like to work with kids in special education - younger kids.

When I have a difficult subject before me - when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools - I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude; I prefer to extricate that intelligent man from his embarrassment and show him the cause of his perplexity, so that he may attain perfection and be at peace.

The ideal direction is using something like Khan Academy for every student to work at their own pace, to master concepts before moving on, and then the teacher using Khan Academy as a tool so that you can have a room of 20 or 30 kids all working on different things, but you can still kind of administrate that chaos.

One of the many wonderful things about homeschooling is that I am constantly learning alongside my daughter.

Education demands, then, only this: the utilization of the inner powers of the child for his own instruction.

I have studied the child. I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it and that is what is called the Montessori method.

Some kids grasp a subject faster and race ahead to the next level, while others continue to struggle with the first. The great thing we've seen is that if you let a student take his time to master a concept, he will probably race ahead on the next one.

In Idaho, we hope to see educators using Khan Academy to individualize their instruction. Instead of a one-size-fits-all lesson, teachers will be able to focus their attention on specific students who are struggling while the rest of the class engages with material appropriate for them.

I taught public school for 26 years, but I just can't do it anymore. For years I asked the school board to let me teach a curriculum that doesn't hurt kids, but they always had other fish to fry. If you hear of a job where I don't have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything, but blind obedience.

It's no good trying to teach people who need to be taught.

Success isn't ideal for every child. If we think a child would do better in a different school, whether it's a specialized program or just a school with a different approach, we'll tell a parent that, as we should.

Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter.

We need to look at learning as the product of educational self-organization. It’s not about making learning happen; it’s about letting it happen.

A tutor should not be continually thundering instruction into the ears of his pupil, as if he were pouring it through a funnel, but, after having put the lad, like a young horse, on a trot, before him, to observe his paces, and see what he is able to perform, should, according to the extent of his capacity, induce him to taste, to distinguish, and to find out things for himself; sometimes opening the way, at other times leaving it for him to open; and by abating or increasing his own pace, accommodate his precepts to the capacity of his pupil.

Online education is pretty special for two reasons. One is that you can get the very best lecture in the world and wherever you are, whenever you want, you can connect to that lecture. The other is this interactivity, where if you know a topic, you can kind of skip over it. Or if you're confused about it, [the area] where you're confused can be analyzed by software.

I believe in teaching just a few students, as teaching requires a constant alert observation on each individual in order to establish a direct relationship. A good teacher cannot be fixed in a routine, and many are just that. During teaching, each moment requires a sensitive mind that is constantly changing and constantly adapting.

Everybody learns differently and everybody gets to a certain point from a different direction.

If a child is poor in math but good at tennis, most people would hire a math tutor. I would rather hire a tennis coach.

You know, it's been proven that 35 to 40 hours a year with one-on-one attention, a student can get one grade level higher.

The most desirable mode of education, is that which is careful that all the acquisitions of the pupil shall be preceded and accompanied by desire . . . The boy, like the man, studies because he desires it. He proceeds upon a plan of is own invention, or by which, by adopting, he has made his own. Everything bespeaks independence and inequality.

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.

Education needs to be personalized and flexible, which means education policy needs to originate from our local communities and not from some bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

I happened to go to a school when I was a kid and that's all we did, pursue our own interests. It was kind of structured so you ended up knowing everything you were supposed to know, arithmetic, Latin, whatever it was. But almost always it was under your own initiative.

An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to say, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity.

As teachers, we must constantly try to improve schools and we must keep working at changing and experimenting and trying until we have developed ways of reaching every child.