Meaningful Learning Quotes

Education that consists in learning things and not the meaning of them is feeding upon the husks and not the corn

It is of no use to commit whole pages to memory, merely to recite them once without hesitation; you must think of the meaning more than the words - of the ideas more than the language.

The mere imparting of information is not education.

When you learn through coding, [you're] coding to learn. You're learning it in a meaningful context, and that's the best way of learning things.

Learning, undigested by thought, is labor lost.

You make knowledge relevant to life and you make it important for children to learn things that will really relate to things going on in their lives, and not abstract.

Knowledge for its own sake was meaningless, its mere accumulation a waste of time. Knowledge must lead to understanding.

All I know is that you can get very little from a book that is making you weep with the effort of reading it. You won’t remember it, and you’ll learn nothing from it, and you’ll be less likely to choose a book over Big Brother next time you have a choice.

The sole justification of teaching, of the school itself, is that the student comes out of it able to do something he could not do before. I say do and not know, because knowledge that doesn't lead to doing something new or doing something better is not knowledge at all.

It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.

... teaching cannot be a process of transference of knowledge from the one teaching to the learner. This is the mechanical transference from which results machinelike memorization, which I have already criticized. Critical study correlates with teaching that is equally critical, which necessarily demands a critical way of comprehending and of realizing the reading of the word and that of the world, the reading of text and of context.

A well organized education should not be one which prepares students for a good remuneration alone. It should be one that can help and guide them towards acquiring clear thinking, a fruitful mind, and an elevated spirit.

A game master or teacher who was primarily concerned with being close enough to the "innermost meaning" would be a very bad teacher. To be candid, I myself, for example, have never in my life said a word to my pupils about the "meaning" of music; if there is one it does not need my explanations. On the other hand I have always made a great point of having my pupils count their eighths and sixteenths nicely. Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the "meaning" but do not imagine that it can be taught.

The central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experience that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences.

Reading and writing, arithmetic and grammar do not constitute education, any more than a knife, fork and spoon constitute a dinner.

When students ask me today, 'What do you think we should learn from this book?' I tell them, 'Whatever you got out of it.'

A good teacher does not get lost in the details, but points to what is essential so that the child or student can find meaning and joy in life.

The teacher who would be true to his mission and accomplish the most good, must give prominence to moral as well as intellectual instruction.

The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.

In ways I don't entirely have the words for, an experience, thought or a lesson isn't real for me until I've written down.

You learn at your best when you have something you care about and can get pleasure in being engaged in.

Knowledge is real knowledge only when it is acquired by the efforts of your intellect, not by memory

True education is limited to those people who would die without knowing, whereas the masses in the institutions are merely going through the motions, for education is a way of living.

The experience may have been costly, but it was also priceless.

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.