At it's highest level, the purpose of teaching is not to teach—it is to inspire the desire for learning. Once a student's mind is set on fire, it will find a way to provide its own fuel.
Interpretation
Teaching should aim to inspire a love of learning rather than just impart information.
This quote emphasizes the transformative power of education. Rather than merely transmitting knowledge, the true essence of teaching lies in igniting a passion for inquiry and understanding within students. When educators inspire students, they evoke a sense of curiosity and motivation that drives individuals to pursue knowledge independently, leading to a deeper and more meaningful educational experience.
In practice
In a motivational speech for teachers, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of inspiring students.
A person is either himself or not himself; is either rooted in his existence or is a fabrication; has either found his humanhood or is still playing with masks and roles and status symbols. And nobody is more aware of this difference (although unconsciously) than a child. Only an authentic person can evoke a good response in the core of the other person; only person is resonant to person.
We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother - which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
"Terrorism" is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; "war" is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.
You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.
By its very definition, civic responsibility means taking a healthy role in the life of one's community. That means that classroom lessons should be complemented by work outside the classroom. Service-learning does just that, tying community service to academic learning.
Maybe all wondrous books appear in our lives the way Milo’s tollbooth appears, an inexplicable gift, cast up by some curious chance that comes to feel, after we have finished and fallen in love with the book, like the workings of a secret purpose. Of all the enchantments of beloved books the most mysterious-the most phantasmal-is the way they always seem to come our way precisely when we need them.
When passions and appetites are stronger than the intellect, men are savages; when the intellect governs the passions, when the passions are servants, men are civilized. The people need education - facts - philosophy.
All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.
There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one's mind and alter one's whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later.
Now...in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, ipods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.
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