Quotes About Teaching

... teaching cannot be a process of transference of knowledge from the one teaching to the learner. This is the mechanical transference from which results machinelike memorization, which I have already criticized. Critical study correlates with teaching that is equally critical, which necessarily demands a critical way of comprehending and of realizing the reading of the word and that of the world, the reading of text and of context.

Teaching, real teaching, is - or ought to be - a messy business.

An alarming number of parents appear to have little confidence in their ability to "teach" their children. We should help parents understand the overriding importance of incidental teaching in the context of warm, consistent companionship. Such caring is usually the greatest teaching, especially if caring means sharing in the activites of the home.

Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth.

While we teach knowledge, we are losing that teaching which is the most important one for human development: the teaching which can only be given by the simple presence of a mature, loving person.

At its deepest level, I think teaching is about bringing people into communion with each other, with yourself as the teacher, and with the subject you are teaching.

Sometime during the 1990s, when I was teaching philosophy at UCSD, my friend, colleague, and music teacher, Carol Plantamura, discussed the possibility of teaching a course together looking at ways in which various literary works (plays, stories, novels) had been treated as operas, and how different themes emerged in the opera and in its original. One of the pairings we planned to use was Mann's great novella and Britten's opera. Unfortunately, the course was never taught, but the idea remained with me.

I learn more about how to run a set teaching six-year-olds. You go into a classroom as a teacher, and the most important work you do is create an infrastructure and an environment that's safe, in which children will feel able and free to take risk. Working with actors, you have to establish the same thing. Teaching a class is not so different than mounting a production.

The key to teaching anything is to remember what it was like not to understand that thing. That's a very hard thing to do. Every time you come to understand something you didn't understand before, you are transformed. You become a different person from who you were before. The key to teaching someone else to understand that same thing is to remember your former, untransformed self. If you can do that, I think you can teach anything, even physics.

Teaching a practice can also be a hindrance if it becomes one's identity. To be a spiritual teacher is a temporary function. I'm a spiritual teacher when somebody comes to me and some teaching happens, but the moment they leave I'm no longer a spiritual teacher. If I carry the identity of spiritual teacher, it will cause suffering.

I know what the teaching is, but to realize the teaching in a life experience, the sh*t really is an opportunity to find out who we truly are. To really learn and to awaken to our potential.

For me, study is a divine and daily imperative, and I study a page of Talmud daily so that I am not only teaching. My teaching is constantly being fed by my learning.

The so-called Church Fathers are not some theologians as we know them nowadays. They were close to the teaching of the Apostles conveying the teaching of those who were close to Jesus. Their theology and wisdom is close to everyday life. We have to thank John Michael Talbot that he has been able to unearth the treasures of those times. This was only possible because he himself in his community experiences the Gospel lived out in our times.

Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught. However, most of what we learn before, during, and after attending schools is learned without its being taught to us. A child learns such fundamental things as how to walk, talk, eat, dress, and so on without being taught these things. Adults learn most of what they use at work or at leisure while at work or leisure. Most of what is taught in classroom settings is forgotten, and much or what is remembered is irrelevant.

One good thing the teaching has given me is the ability to read and revise my own work.

Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics.

Life is a frail and transitory thing, but it has been given a higher purpose and dignity through the revelation of God's Teaching to Israel, and the resulting dedication of an entire people to God's service.

My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application-not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech-and learn them so well that words become works.

They call it coaching but it is teaching. You do not just tell them...you show them the reasons.

I'm teaching myself to believe in things I don't understand, I don't even know if they're true, but that's what dreamers do.

Where you can see tribal behavior now is in this business about teaching evolution in a science class and intelligent design. It's the scientists themselves are behaving tribally.

When I think of the most able students I have encountered in my teaching - I mean those who have distinguished themselves not only by skill but by independence of thought - then I must confess that all have had a lively interest in epistemology.

I'm a product of its [american] teaching, of its thinking, of its -isms, of its religion, of its education. I am conditioned, raised and developed by America; I am America. And as it changes, my thoughts also change. Because no matter what I believe, what the powers-that-be believe will affect me.

Let it be understood that those who are not found living as He taught are not Christian- even though they profess with the lips the teaching of Christ.

That was the most offensive thing I've ever seen in 20 years of teaching - and that includes an elementary school production of hair.

Fathers should start teaching the boys how to punch.

Any teacher can study books, but books do not necessarily bring wisdom, nor that human insight essential to consummate teaching skills.

Freedom of teaching and of opinion in book or press is the foundation for the sound and natural development of any people.

The real master is only a presence. He has no intentions of being a master. His presence is his teaching. His love is his message. Every gesture of his hand is pointing to the moon. And this whole thing is not being done, it is a happening. The master is not a doer. He has learned the greatest secret of life: let-go. The master has drowned his ego and the idea of separation from existence itself.

It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.

Frederick Nietzsche was important to me, in teaching that it's okay to strive to improve the human being.

When I speak at my local church, which I try to do 35 to 40 times a year, I try in every lesson to take the Old Testament text or New Testament text and apply them to what is happening to me or how that applies to the audience that I'm teaching in a modern, fast-changing, technological world. I use headlines, interfaith and that sort of thing.

It was my notion that teaching had to be thorough, it had to be well done, and it had to connect to something beyond the classroom; life.

I have slowly come to realize that a family is composed of people who are teaching one another.

If I'm teaching deep things, then I view it as important to make people feel like they're learning deep things, because otherwise, they will still have a hole in their mind for "deep truths" that needs filling, and they will go off and fill their heads with complete nonsense that has been written in a more satisfying style.

When someone is taught the joy of learning, it becomes a life-long process that never stops, a process that creates a logical individual. That is the challenge and joy of teaching.

My being a teacher had a decisive influence on making language and systems as simple as possible so that in my teaching, I could concentrate on the essential issues of programming rather than on details of language and notation.

Good teaching is forever being on the cutting edge of a child's competence.

Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid ... research and discussions ... with regard to the doctrine of evolution.

Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy.

I agree that it's important to be of a virtuous nature, but I would also contend that if you had to choose between giving a man a noble disposition or teaching him to think clearly, you'd do better to teach him to think clearly. Too many problems in this world are caused by men with noble dispositions and clouded minds.

Effective teaching may be the hardest job there is.

We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.

The old Indian teaching was that is is wrong to tear loose from its place on the earth anything that may be growing there. It may be cut off, but it should not be uprooted. The trees and the grass have spirits. Whatever one of such growth may be destroyed by some good Indian, his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessities.

I love teaching. It's a job that lasts forever. Whatever you teach children today travels with them far into the future.

I'm very fast on teaching guys. Like, when I came over here, I only had two rehearsals with the band. I wondered when I first got here... but it sure came up great.

The Psalms are much more than poetry. Many of them bear the title, Maskil, or teaching psalm. They are thus intended to instruct the mind as well as to encourage the heart. They are designed not only to reflect a mood, but to show us also how to handle that mood; how to escape from depression or how to balance exaltation with wisdom.

To be frank, I suspect that today there is little respect for Christianity as source of moral teaching about goodness.