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 →Architecture 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
We spend all our time teaching reading and writing. We spend absolutely no time at all, in most schools, teaching either speaking or, more importantly still, listening.
If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn.
In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
Never stand still. Only stand still enough to learn, and once you stop learning in that stance, move off. Always keep yourself engaged, in theater, in whatever job you can get. If you can't get an acting job, then go backstage. Or take tickets. But be around actors because that is where you will primarily learn.
I know what I should love to do - to build a study; to write, and to think of nothing else. I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made, and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it. Not a bookworm, being which is to give off no utterances; but a man in the world of writing - one with a pen that shall stop men to listen to it, whether they wish to or not.
Our teachers deserve better feedback.