What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
George Bernard ShawRead
My own education has been entirely controversial: that is why I know what I am writing about; and appear eccentric to dogmatically educated Old School Ties whose heads are stuffed with obsolete shibboleths.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Education can be unconventional and still provide valuable insights, challenging traditional perspectives.
In this quote, George Bernard Shaw emphasizes that his unique and controversial education allows him to understand subjects more deeply than those with traditional backgrounds. He suggests that rigid adherence to outdated ideas can lead to a lack of true understanding, and that being labelled eccentric is often a sign of innovative thought.
Themes
EducationControversyEccentricityUnderstandingTradition
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of innovative thinking, one might quote Shaw to advocate for a diverse approach to education.
More from George Bernard Shaw
All quotes →Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
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Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
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Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
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Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
George Bernard ShawRead
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
George Bernard ShawRead
Similar quotes
Good writing, and this is especially important in a subject such as economics, must also involve the reader in the matter at hand. It is not enough to explain. The images that are in the mind of the writer must be made to reappear in the mind of the reader, and it is the absence of this ability that causes much economic writing to be condemned, quite properly, as abstract.
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Had I pursued my education long enough to learn all the conventional dos and don'ts of starting a business, I often wonder how different my life and career might have been.
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Education beats the beauty and the youth.
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True teaching liberates the student from his teacher.
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I'd be satisfied just coaching in high school. I turned down a number of colleges when I was teaching in South Bend, Indiana, before I went into the service. I honestly believe that if I hadn't enlisted in the service, I would never have left high school teaching. I'm sure I would have never left.
John WoodenRead
Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter.
John DeweyRead