It has been said that the primary function of schools is to impart enough facts to make children stop asking questions. Some, with whom the schools do not succeed, become scientists.
-- The Camel's Nose by Knut Schmidt-Nielsen
Experience is a dear teacher, and only fools will learn from no other.
-- Benjamin Franklin
I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work."
--Ben Franklin
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."
--- Benjamin Franklin
Dear Miss Manners:
My home economics teacher says that one must never place
one's
elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in
between
courses, is all right. Which is correct?
Gentle Reader:
For the purpose of answering examinations in your home
economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this
principle of education may be of even greater importance to you
now
than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners
believes that is.
I must say that I find television very educational. The minute
somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for
the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is bad.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum
for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention
it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand
exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that
most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectually
heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers
to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine
not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general
understanding of science as an enterprise?
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer",
Vol. 12, page 186
lim(major) = P.E.
GPA-->0
A school should not be a preparation for life. A school should
be life.
-- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
-- ?? Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
-- George Santayana (1863-1952)
The one clear and enduring failure of contemporary American
education is at the high end of the cognitive ability distribution.
-- Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, _The Bell Curve_
Most gifted students are going to grow up segregated from the
rest of society no matter what. They will then go to the elite
colleges no matter what, move into successful careers no matter
what, and eventually lead the institutions of this country no
matter what. Therefore, the nation had better do its damnedest
to make them as wise as it can.
-- Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, _The Bell Curve_
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
College is like a woman --- you work so hard to get in, and nine months later you wish you'd never come.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. (Albert Einstein)
I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours.
"As you approach 4.0, study time approaches infinity."
-- Professor Ralph Noble, RPI, Psychology of Motivation, Fall
1991
We are students of words: we are shut up in a schools and colleges
and recitation-rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at
last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a
thing.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I never let my schooling get in the way of my education."
-- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Last Modified: 6/2001
Patri Friedman / patri@izzy.com