QUOTABLE QUOTES
The public school is the greatest discovery made by man. [Horace Mann]
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Public education does not serve a public, it creates a public. The question is, ” What kind of public does it want?” [Neil Postman]
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Ever feel like a frog, drooped, pooped? I know. One told me. The frog feeling comes when you want to be bright but feel dumb; when you want to share but are selfish; when you want to be thankful but face resentment; when you want to be great but are small; when you want to care but are indifferent.Yes, at one time or another each of us has found himself on a lily pad floating down the great river of life. Frightened and disgusted, we are too froggish to budge.
Once upon a time there was a frog. But he really wasn’t a frog. He was a prince who looked and felt like a frog. A wicked witch had cast a spell on him. Only the kiss of a beautiful maiden could save him. But, since when do cute chicks kiss frogs. So there he sat, unkissed prince in frog form. But miracles happen. One day a beautiful maiden grabbed him up, and gave him a big smack. Crash ! Boom ! Zap !
There he sat, a handsome prince……and you know the rest. They lived happily ever after.
So what is the task of schools ? To kiss frogs of course. [Anon]
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Cheating is the only creative intellectual activity available to many students. [Postmann]
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I am often asked if I approve of compulsory education. The answer is that ‘I do’ and I wish that we had it. All that we have is compulsory attendance.[Brener]
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Creeping Eichmannism : A sort of spiritless, mechanical, abstract functioning that relies on unquestioning orders from above and implementation of policy without question or dialogue.
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The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. (Dante)
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The purpose of evaluation is not to prove, but to improve. [Stufflebeam]
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It is easier to be critical than to be correct. [Disraeli]
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I have never been stopped in the street by people collecting funds for nuclear weapons or war machines – because this is well taken care of by governments. But I have seen endless collections for school children – for those who should be the real concern of governments. [Peter Ustinov]
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If you can’t fix it, don’t break it. [J. Cooper]
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What is needed in society is a change of pattern of living……bring people back into the lives of children and children into the lives of people. [Urie Brofenbrenner]
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The Atlas Complex comes from trying to carry the world in one hand while carrying the can in the other.
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Learning to be a teacher is not just learning a job – it is learning a new way of being yourself. [Guy Claxton]
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The world can be a terrible place, not because of the bad things that happen, but because of the good people who stand by and let them happen. [Albert Einstein]
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A national curriculum is someone else’s story.
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The only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.
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Vaccination Theory of Education : English is not like history and history is not science and science is not art and art is not music and art and music are minor subjects and English, History and Science are major subjects; and a subject is something you ‘take’ and when you have ‘taken’ it, you have ‘had’ it and if you have ‘had it’, you are immune and need not take it again. [Postman & Weingarten]
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Don’t put plumbers in charge of a garage just because they own a car.
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School children need to be happier, productive and more optimistic. Quite frankly, the USA is not quite No.1 at this. We need to shift the focus to the children and not just the tests. Children need to shake hands with their brains and develop their emotional literacy in classrooms that are joyful. [Goldie Hawn] See www.thehawnfoundation.org & www.ascd.org
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Good morning, class.
Today I will prepare you for the future.
Listen carefully.
And do not interrupt !
Are there are questions ?
None ?
Good
oxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
I was good at everything. Honest. Everything.
Until I started being here with you.
I was good at
laughing
playing dead
being.
Yeah, I was good at everything.
But, now I’m only good at everything
On Saturdays and Sundays. [Albert Cullum : The Geranium on the Window Sill….]
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Help pupils reach their full potential. Catch them doing something right. [Anon]
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I hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understand
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I look back in wonderment, anger, and near-despair at the stark reality of we the people scarcely murmuring for eight years over the imposition of the NCLB Act on our PUBLIC SCHOOLS. [John Goodlad. Aug.,2009]
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TESTING
If you judge people, you have no time to love them. [Mother Teresa]
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National tests are not like the weather, something to which we must resign ourselves…They are not a force of nature but a force of politics – and political decisions can be questioned, challenged, and ultimately reversed. [Alfie Kohn]
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The circle of children’s learning has been narrowed and impoverished all the year for the sake of a result at the end of it and the ‘end’ is an illusion. [Matthew Arnold 1867]
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Having a New Yorker lecture us on how to run an education system is like having Ian Thorpe teaching Ernie the Eeel how to swim. [Anne Patty. SMH]
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Measurable outcomes may be the least significant results of learning. [Linda McNeil]
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The printing of lists is misleading. Reducing the complexities of schools to a single number or even a set of numbers is not only misleading, it will undermine educational outcomes as teachers are forced to teach to the tests at the expense of the remainder of the curriculum. [Dr. John Kaye, NSW Greens MP]
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The Germans describe blanket testing as stierdung mitte; the Italians as conncime del toro. I call it meadow mayonaise. Avoid it ! [Author]
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Standardised tests, when used as the sole measure of student achievement, distort our public education system and discourage educators from creating healthy and high-functioning learning environments. [Sam Chaltain, 2009]
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The more we learn about standardised testing the more likely we are to be appalled. The more appalled we are, the more inclined we will be to do what is necessary to protect our children. [Alfie Kohn]
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When the affective is secure, the cognitive is inevitable. [John Settledge]
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There are those who don’t know; and those who don’t know they don’t know.
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Child to Test Constructors : “You are the biggest bullies at our school. Why do you do to us what you tell us not to do.”
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Bullies know that intimidation works.
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Apes and maggots appearing in Hollywood films are better protected from stress than are children in public schools today. [Susan Ohanian]
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Transformational learning beats drill-kill methods any day. Personalise pupil-learning.
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Teaching for test results tampers with the nature of childhood [Chip Wood]
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There will always be prayer in public state schools while there is testing. [Maxine]
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Twenty-four cooks assigned to the same mayonnaise recipe ; twenty-four same bowls; twenty-four same eggs; twenty-four same mustard; twenty-four same oil; twenty-four same whisks; twenty-four same peppermills; twenty-four same measuring-cups; same room; same time of day, same marching-orders… will create twenty-four different mayonnaises. [L.G. Costello & R. Reich : Notes on Cooking.]
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There are only four words in the English language that end in -OUS; and they all apply to blanket testing….tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, hazardous.
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When we comprehend why youngsters wear fishing tackle on their face and on touchy parts of their body; when we are able to explain why so many rub black and darkly-coloured ink into their skins; why so many wear baseball hats everywhere; why low-lifes express their doubtful artistic talents on buildings, then we, in like manner, will understand the motivation of pundicrats who impose blanket testing.
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A third-party high-stakes testing environment generates an unproductive tension in classrooms. Test preparation takes over. A shopping list of minimal competencies ensues.
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Normal professional discourse about the nature and value of shared evaluation and allied learning exhanges is replaced by talk about test scores and printed tables.
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The bien-pensant of efficacy-hawks is that children must suffer mental agony to learn properly.
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Raising test scores or closing gaps in test scores between groups of human beings is not a proper aim for educators, and if pursued, this approach will suck out any sense of humanity left in classrooms and exacerbate the growing, staggering inequality. [Mark Garrison]
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Pupils and teachers in our state schools serve to show that privilege is an anachronism, that dogma is destructive, that freedom is a birthright and discrimination is a wrong that should never be suffered. To the advantages of state education with its secularity, diversity, locality, let us now add humanity. [Geoffrey Robertson,QC]
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Within each person who does the hard yards a cerebral metabolism develops that ensures economy of effort and a knowledge of useful processes that is denied to parvenues who take short-cuts within the system .[Phil Cullen, ON LINE opinion, April, 2009]
