We should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together in a higher unity.
You can teach students how to work; you can teach them technique - how to use reason; you can even give them a sense of proportions - of order. You can teach them general principles.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the multifaceted nature of teaching, highlighting that education goes beyond mere technique to include reasoning and principles.
Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe's quote underscores that effective education is not limited to imparting technical skills or specific knowledge. It encompasses a broader spectrum, including teaching students how to think critically, understand the principles behind techniques, and appreciate the importance of order and proportion. This holistic approach aims to cultivate well-rounded individuals who are equipped not just with skills but with the reasoning necessary to apply them effectively.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a graduation speech to inspire future teachers.
More from Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
All quotes βArchitecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.
The demands of the time for objectivity and functionality must be fulfilled. If that clearly happens, then the buildings of our day will convey the greatness of which the age is capable, and only a fool will maintain that they lack it.
I think that an industrial process is not like a rubber stamp. Everything has to be put together and, as such, should have its own expression.
Reinforced concrete buildings are by nature skeletal buildings. No noodles nor armoured turrets. A construction of girders that carry the weight, and walls that carry no weight. That is to say, buildings consisting of skin and bones.
Modern buildings of our time are so huge that one must group them. Often the space between these buildings is as important as the buildings themselves.
Similar quotes
Faults in English prose derive not so much from lack of knowledge, intelligence or art as from lack of thought, patience or goodwill.
People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations.
Bureaucratic solutions to problems of practice will always fail because effective teaching is not routine, students are not passive, and questions of practice are not simple, predictable, or standardized. Consequently, instructional decisions cannot be formulated on high then packaged and handed down to teachers.
Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.
It is important for young entrepreneurs to be adequately self-aware to know what they do not know.
If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.