In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of learning through real-life experiences, even if they can be harsh or challenging.
Charles Sanders Peirce highlights that although traditional pedagogy often overlooks unconventional methods of teaching, such as the lessons learned through experience—which can sometimes be tough or even cruel—they are nonetheless invaluable. He suggests that the experiences we endure serve as powerful educators, shaping our understanding and wisdom in ways that formal education may not.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one might quote Peirce to emphasize the harsh lessons learned in life.
The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking.
Notwithstanding all that has been discovered since Newton's time, his saying that we are little children picking up pretty pebbles on the beach while the whole ocean lies before us unexplored remains substantially as true as ever, and will do so though we shovel up the pebbles by steam shovels and carry them off in carloads.
My language is the sum total of myself.
All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.
The third class consists of men to whom nothing seems great but reason. If force interests them, it is not in its exertion, but in that it has a reason and a law. For men of the first class, nature is a picture; for men of the second class, it is an opportunity; for men of the third class, it is a cosmos, so admirable, that to penetrate to its ways seems to them the only thing that makes life worth living. These are the men whom we see possessed by a passion to learn.
A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be.
The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.
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.
PowerPoint is like being trapped in the style of early Egyptian flatland cartoons rather than using the more effective tools of Renaissance visual representation.
I think someone should explain to the child that it's OK to make mistakes. That's how we learn. When we compete, we make mistakes.
If you don't give your kid freedom to make choices with money, including stupid choices, he'll make plenty when he gets to college.
The tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond price.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.