Great Quotes about Education

Here are some Great quotes I came across while doing some rasearch. They are all quotes about education. Enjoy! These quotes are from Alternative Education India.


"Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten"
B. F. Skinner
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"Education is not something which the teacher does ... it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being"
Maria Montessori
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"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one"
Malcolm S. Forbes
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"You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you ... you are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth ..."
from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
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"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think"
Socrates
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"What generally happens is that guardians become so tired taking care of the child that they feel a great burden lifted from their shoulders when the child goes to school... they think 'I would be happier if the child were away for a while' but they only think so because they do not know what a great opportunity it is to begin to train and guide a child. It is an opportunity for its whole life; and if a guardian misses it, it means a loss to the child."
from The Sufi Message of Inyat Khan, Vol III
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"You cannot teach anybody anything. You can only help them discover it within themselves"
Galileo
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"There is nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But it is in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor. In prison they may torture your body but they do not torture your brains"
George Bernard Shaw
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"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education"
Mark Twain
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"Children who are forced to eat acquire a loathing for food and children who are forced to learn acquire a loathing for knowledge"
Bertrand Russell
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"From my grandfather's father, [I learned] to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home, and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent"
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Roman Emperor 2nd Century AD)
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"My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school"
Margaret Mead
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"What are you educated for, anyway? You may be a sociologist, an anthropologist, or a scientist, with your specialised mind working away at a fragment of the whole field of life. You are filled with knowledge and words, with capable explanations and rationalisations. And perhaps in the future the computer will be able to do all this infinitely better than you can."
"So education may have a different meaning altogether - not merely transferring what is printed on a page to your brain. Education may mean opening the doors of perception to the vast movement of life. It may mean learning how to live happily, freely, without hate and confusion but in beatitude. Modern education is blinding us: we learn to fight each other more and more, to compete, to struggle with each other. Right education is surely finding a different way of life, setting the mind free of its own conditioning. And perhaps there can be love which in its action will bring about true relationship between man and man"
from Five Conversations by J Krishnamurti
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"....since we can't know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned"
John Holt
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"Grade school is the snooze button on the clock-radio of life"
John Rogers
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"The principle goal of education is to create men and woman who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done"
Jean Piaget
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"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry: for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of FREEDOM: without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food ... handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly"
Albert Einstein
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"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is"
Isaac Asimov
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Alternative Education: A Look at Alternative Schools

My initial understanding of alternative schools was that they were for students who had extreme behavioral problems that needed a more contained evironment separate from the public schools within his/her district. However, according to Wikipedia.org, an alternative school, sometimes referred to as a minischool, or remedial school, is any public or private school having a special curriculum, especially an elementary or secondary school offering a more flexible program of study than a traditional school. According to Learning Alternatives, alternative education is recognizing that everyone does not learn in the same way and should not be taught in the same way using a commom curriculum. It is accepting that all schools do not have to be alike with the same learning envirnments and that parents and children are capable of making descisions about waht and how they learn. It is a means of incorporating variety and choice within school systems to ensure that every young person may find a path to the educational goals of the community.

Information provided by Wikipedia.org and Learning Alternatives

10 Signs that You Need to Find a Different Kind of Education for Your Child

While googling and searching throughout the Internet, I came across and interesting website that offered good information in regards to alternative education. Although there are many outlets a parents may choose in order to further educate their child in the most effective way, determining whether or not their child may need a form of Alternative education may pose as an even greater challenge. The Education Revolution provided ten signs for determining whether or not there is a need for an Alternative form of education. The site provides a detailed explanation for each statement. I will simply provide the statement. For further information one may address the site for a more detailed explanation.

• 1. Does your child say he or she hates school?


• 2. Does your child find it difficult to look an adult in the eye, or to interact with children younger or older than they are?


• 3. Does your child seem fixated on designer labels and trendy clothes for school?


• 4. Does your child come from school tired and cranky?


• 5. Do your children come home complaining about conflicts that they've had in school and unfair situations that they have been exposed to?


• 6. Has your child lost interest in creative expression through art, music, and dance?


• 7. Has your child stopped reading for fun, or reading or writing for pleasure? Are your children doing just the minimum for homework and going off for some escapist activity?


• 8. Does your child procrastinate until the last minute to do homework?
• 9. Does your child come home talking about anything exciting that happened in school that day?If not, maybe nothing exciting is happening for your child in school. Would you want to keep working if your job was like that?
• 10. Did the school nurse of guidance counselor suggest that your child has some strange three lettered disease, like ADD, and that they should now be given Ritalin or some other drug?

Information was provided by The Education Revolution.

Alternative Education: A Closer look at Homeschooling

From my own understanding, Homeschooling is homebased learning done by a parent or a teacher from the school district. The child learns the same information as he/she would in the regular school classrom, but in a shorter period of time.

What is Homeschooling?

According to Homeschool.com, Homeschooling is the most flexible and diverse educational option available today. The variety of homeschooling styles reflects the diversity of the people who choose this method. Some families organize their homeschool the same as a traditional school, with the children studying the same subjects the same way as public school students. Some families use the opposite approach and "un-school" their children-a far less structured approach where the children’s schedule is determined by their interests and readiness. This method allows parents to pick and choose the classes and materials that meet their children’s needs.

Some Advantages and Disadvantages of Homeschooling:

Advantages of Homeschooling

For many homeschoolers, one of the greatest benefits of homeschooling is the strengthening of family bonds. Homeschooling families spend lots of time learning and playing together and this naturally creates close ties between brothers and sisters and between children and parents. Homeschoolers also have a great deal of flexibility in how and what they learn, allowing them to learn about the "real world" by being part of it.

Disadvantages of Homeschooling

The biggest disadvantage facing the homeschooling family is loss of income. Someone must be home, at least part-time, to facilitate the children’s learning. Some of the other difficulties facing homeschooling parents include lack of confidence in their own and their children’s abilities, public and/or family criticism, and adjusting career goals and work schedules to accommodate the needs of the family.




A great blog to get more information on is

A Great site to get a more detailed decscription on the in's and out's of Homeschooling is
The Homeschool Zone

Some information provided by Homeschool.com

Alternative Education: A Look at Independent Schools

Initially I was unsure as to what was included under the category of independent schools. I assumed that these schools included a format that was specific to a certain philosphy such as Montessori Schools.

Independent Schools
According to Wikipedia.org, independent schools are schools that are not dependent upon national or local government for financing the operation and are instead operated by tuition charges, gifts, and in some cases the investments by trustees or alumnae.

Independent Schools is a generalized term that includes private schools and religiously affiliated schools. However, it excludes all institutions that has financial dependence on outside organizations, including parochial (Catholic) schools.

Independent schools own, govern, and finance themselves, as opposed to government (public) and other private schools (parochial/diocesan) where the state or the church owns, governs, and finances the school.

Which Schools are Considered Independent?
I was partially right in my assumption that Montesssori schools were included under the title of Independent, however, this is not the only type of school that falls under the heading. Other schools include Waldorf Schools, friends schools (run by the Quakers), democratic, and free schools such as Sands School just to include a few.

In my research on Wikipedia.org I found that an increasing number of traditionally independent school forms now exist within a state-run, public education. These include some of the Waldorf and Montessori schools. Most of the schools offer some form of scholarship to better accomodate the financial needs of the families.

How many students attend Independent Schools?
Independent schools in the United States educate only a tiny fraction of the school-age population (slightly over 1% of the entire school-age population, 10% of the 10% of kids who go to private schools).

How much does it cost to attend Independent Schools?
According to the April 3, 2006 issue of the Washington Post, private school tuitions have been steadily increasing. A few years ago, school officials were concerned about breaking the $20,000 barrier. Now they say they don't know when -- or if -- the financial burden will ease, given the rising costs of teacher salaries, new construction, learning specialists, financial aid programs, technology improvements and other initiatives that have combined to push tuitions to heights unimagined.



Information taken from The Washington Post and Wikipedia.org