Learning is more effective when it is an active rather than a passive process.
Interpretation
Active learning enhances the effectiveness of the educational process.
This quote by Kurt Lewin emphasizes the idea that engagement in the learning process leads to better retention and understanding of material compared to a passive approach, such as simply listening or reading without interaction. Active learning involves participants in the process, allowing them to experiment, discuss, and apply concepts in a hands-on manner, which ultimately fosters deeper comprehension and critical thinking skills.
In practice
In a classroom, the teacher can encourage students to participate in discussions rather than just lecturing for hours.
The American culture ideal of the "self-made-man," of everyone "standing on his own feet" seemed as tragic a picture as the initiative-destroying dependence on a benevolent despot. He felt and perceived clearly that we all need continuous help from each other, and that this type of interdependence is the greatest challenge to maturity of individual and group functioning.
The history of acceptance of new theories frequently shows the following steps: At first the new idea is treated as pure nonsense, not worth looking at. Then comes a time when a multitude of contradictory objections are raised, such as: the new theory is too fancy, or merely a new terminology; it is not fruitful, or simply wrong. Finally a state is reached when everyone seems to claim that he had always followed this theory. This usually marks the last state before general acceptance.
If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.
Fortunately I experienced Max Wertheimer's teaching in Berlin and collaborated for over a decade with Wolfgang Köhler. I need not emphasize my debts to these outstanding personalities. The fundamental ideas of Gestalt theory are the foundation of all our investigations in the field of the will, of affection, and of the personality.
At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.
I really see no harm which can come of giving our children a little knowledge of physiology. ... The instruction must be real, based upon observation, eked out by good explanatory diagrams and models, and conveyed by a teacher whose own knowledge has been acquired by a study of the facts; and not the mere catechismal parrot-work which too often usurps the place of elementary teaching.
It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.
Every literate woman is a victory over poverty
The only way you can invent tomorrow is if you break out of the enclosure that the school system has provided for you by the exams written by people who are trained in another generation.
A nation that does not read much does not know much. And a nation that does not know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box, and the voting booth. And those decisions ultimately affect the entire nation...the literate and illiterate.
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