The wrong things are predominantly stressed in the schools - things remote from the student's experience and need.

A strenuous effort must be made to train young people to think for themselves and take independent charge of their lives.

Why, it is as easy to teach the name of an idea, if it is clearly formulated in the child's mind, as to teach the name of an object.

You can't touch love, but you can feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.

The immediate future is going to be tragic for all of us unless we find a way of making the vast educational resources of this country serve the true purpose of education, truth and justice.

It is a rare privilege to watch the birth, growth, and first feeble struggles of a living mind; this privilege is mine.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better , if less "showily." Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself... Teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.