Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.
Diane RavitchRead
Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves?
Interpretation
Teachers need to be respected as professionals to effectively educate students in critical thinking.
This quote emphasizes the importance of treating teachers as professionals in their own right, suggesting that for educators to successfully foster independent thinking in their students, they must themselves be granted the autonomy and respect required to think freely and innovatively. It underscores the interdependence between the treatment of educators and the development of critical thinking skills in children.
In practice
During a teacher training seminar to emphasize the importance of educational autonomy.
Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.
The greatest obstacle to those who hope to reform American education is complacency.
Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions
What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of new evidence? Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality. When we are too certain of our opinions, we run the risk of ignoring any evidence that conflicts with our views. It is doubt that shows we are still thinking, still willing to reexamine hardened beliefs when confronted with new facts and new evidence.
Unless the schools provide our children with a vision of human possibility that enlightens and empowers them with knowledge and taste, they will simply play their role in someone else's marketing schemes. Unless they understand deeply the sources of our democracy, they will take it for granted and fail to exercise their rights and responsibilities.
Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.
We cannot always build a future for our youth, but we can always build our youth for the future.
I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books.
Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.
What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer reflective types in the world?
Education must not simply teach work-it must teach life.
Any decent writer writes because there's some deep internal need to keep learning.
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