I imagine a school system that recognizes learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers...creativity above fact regurgitation...individuality above conformity.. and excellence above standardized performance..... And we must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of a natural and passionate approach to learning over standardized testing and conformity.
Tom Peters advocates for an educational system that nurtures a genuine love for learning and values creativity and individuality over rigid standards and conformity. He criticizes traditional reform efforts that merely perpetuate existing flaws in the system, suggesting that true learning thrives in environments that encourage curiosity, passion, and personal expression rather than bureaucratic uniformity.
In practice
In a discussion about educational reform, one could quote this to emphasize the need for innovative approaches to teaching.
My half-baked reading of history is that we continue to go through these waves of entrepreneurial explosion followed by merger mania and consolidation. Out of that come big sluggish companies that eventually collapse under the weight of what they've created, and are killed off by the next wave of entrepreneurs.
The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.
Nearly 100% of innovation-from business to politics-is inspired not by "market analysis" but by people who are supremely pissed off by the way things are.
Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders.
The little people will get even, which is one of a thousand reasons why they are not little people at all. If you're a jerk as a leader, you will be torpedoed. And usually it won't be by your vice presidents; it will be on the loading dock at 3am when no supervisors are around.
Champions are pioneers, and pioneers get shot at. The companies that get the most from champions, therefore, are those that have rich support network so their pioneers will flourish. This point is so important it's hard to overstress. No support systems, no champions. No champions, no innovations.
If you step up the self-education curve, you will come up with more answers than you can use.
I think they assign things to students which are way over their heads, which destroy your love of reading, rather than leading you to it. I don't understand that. Gosh.
To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.
I am a passionate traveler, and from the time I was a child, travel formed me as much as my formal education. In order to appreciate cultures of another nation, one needs to go there, know the people and mingle with the culture of that country. One way to do that, if one is lucky enough, is to buy things from those cultures.
I always tell kids, you have two eyes and one mouth. Keep two open and one closed. You never learn anything if you're the one talking.
The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder.
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