Student-Centered Approach Quotes

The essence of education is not to transfer knowledge; it is to guide the learning process, to put responsibility for study in the student's own hands...[and] place people on their own path of discovery and invention.

To me the worst thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils and produces a subservient subject.

How can I be an educator if I do not develop in myself a caring and loving attitude toward the student, which is indispensable on the part of one who is committed to teaching and to the education process itself.

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.

It’s about, when did it make sense to say one size fits everybody? It never ever ever made sense to do that, and yet we’re still selling education the same way we sold it when you and I were in high school.

You've got to accept the fact that you are basically not teaching a subject, you are teaching children

We should spend less time at universities filling our students' minds with content by lecturing at them, and more time igniting their creativity … by actually talking with them.

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.

The factory model of education is the wrong model for the 21st century. Today, our schools must prepare all students for college and careers-and do far more to personalize instruction and employ the smart use of technology.

That education is not an affair of "telling" and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory. Is not this deplorable situation due to the fact that the doctrine is itself merely told? It is preached; it is lectured; it is written about.

You know, I want to teach, but I don’t want to read?

What is desired is that the teacher ceased being a lecturer, satisfied with transmitting ready-made solutions. His role should rather be that of a mentor stimulating initiative and research.

A school should not be a preparation for life. A school should be life.

I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a college, can at all avail to reach these difficulties and perplexities, but they solve themselves when we leave institutions and address individuals.

Teachers shouldn't make the mistake of always thinking they're the smartest person in the room

The secret of sound education is to get each pupil to learn for himself, instead of instructing him by driving knowledge into him on a stereotyped system.

I went to a school that was founded on a lot of very radical ideals of how education should be changed. But what's happening to schools like that sort of all over the country is in economic pressure they're becoming more and more preparatory because that's what people will really pay the money for private schooling for now.

An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough.

There are amazing teachers, but the system doesn't always allow them to address the individual needs of a child.

As an educator, I think educators should meet the people wherever they are. Don't even ask them to come half-way. Find them where they are, and sit on a couch with them.

The successful teacher is no longer on a height, pumping knowledge at high pressure into passive receptacles.

If you do happen to get a scholarship or get a few offers, don't choose the school that is the biggest school. Choose the one that's right for you. Go somewhere you're needed, not where you're wanted.