In this blog entry I have gathered a number of quotes from educators and others – use them as a springboard for your own thoughts about what you are learning and experiencing as you attend classes and enter into the world of education in schools. Research more if any of these people interest you or spark something in you…

  1. ‘How has the world of the child changed in the last 150 years?’ … the answer is. ‘It’s hard to imagine any way in which it hasn’t changed….they’re’ immersed in all kinds of stuff that was unheard of 150years ago, and yet if you look at schools today versus 100 years ago, they are more similar than dissimilar’. Peter Senge
  2. I imagine a school system that recognizes learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers…creativity above fact regurgitation…individuality above conformity.. and excellence above standardized performance….. And we must reject all notions of ‘reform’ that serve up more of the same: more testing, more ’standards’, more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy. Tom Peters Author ‘Re-imagine’ www.tompeters.com
  3. ‘Life can only be understood backwards but you have to live it forward. You can only do that by stepping into uncertainty and by trying, within this uncertainty, to create your own islands of security….The new security will be a belief that …if this doesn’t work out you could do something else’. You are your own security’. Charles Handy Business Philosopher.
  4. I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. Howard Gardner
  5. ‘ I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder how we could tolerated anything so primitive.’ John W Gardner
  6. ‘We imagine a school in which students and teachers excitedly and joyfully stretch themselves to their limits in pursuit of projects built on their vision…not one that succeeds in making apathetic students satisfying minimal standards.’ S Papert
  7. ‘It is our belief that schools in the main are entering the twenty-first century with structures and more importantly, underlying assumptions which are nineteenth century in origins, or relating to the world of the 1950 or 1960s.’ Bowring -Carr and Burnham West UK Educators
  8. ‘In order to transform schools successfully, educators need to navigate the difficult space between letting go of old patterns and grabbing on to new ones.’ Deal 1990
  9. ‘Until recently, education has had it backwards, caring little for the teacher… and enormously about the content. Yet it is a gifted teacher who can infect a generation with the excitement of learning.’ Aquarian Conspiracy
  10. ‘We must give more attention to the interplay between the science of teaching – pedagogy – and the art of teaching… A teacher must be anchored in pedagogy and blend imagination, creativity and inspiration into the teaching learning process to ignite a passion for learning in student.’ Peyton Williams, President ASCD 2003
  11. ‘School improvement is most surely and thoroughly achieved when teachers engage in frequent, continuous and increasingly concrete talk about teaching practices… capable of distinguishing one practice and it’s virtue from another.’ Judith Warren Little Education Researcher
  12. Education needs to embrace radical, new and unconventional approaches to deeper teaching and learning for understanding if we want students to be equipped to flourish in an ever-more complicated world…Professor David Perkins, Harvard