Grasping the structure of a subject is understanding it in a way that permits many other things to be related to it meaningfully. To learn structure in short, is to learn how things are related.

It is sentimentalism to assume that the teaching of life can always be fitted to the child's interests, just as it is empty formalism to force the child to parrot the formulas of adult society. Interests can be created and stimulated.

The notion of multiple literacies recognized that there are many ways of being-and of becoming-literate, and that how literacy develops and how it is used depend on the particular social and cultural setting.

Apollo without Dionysus may indeed be a well-informed, good citizen but he's a dull fellow. He may even be 'cultured,' in the sense one often gets from traditionalist writings in education. . . . But without Dionysus he will never make and remake a culture.

The agentive mind is not only active in nature, but it seeks out dialogue and discourse with other active minds. And it is through this dialogic, discursive process that we come to know the Other and his points of view, his stories. We learn an enormous amount not only about the world but about ourselves by discourse with Others.

Knowledge helps only when it descends into habits.

Grasping the structure of a subject is understanding it in a way that permits many other things to be related to it meaningfully. To learn structure in short, is to learn how things are related.