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.
American computer science grads often have very little exposure to the human condition. They've rarely had manual labor or service jobs. They grow up in a bubble of privilege lulled into thinking this country is a true meritocracy.
To achieve our goals of educating bold and ambitious children, we must invest in enriching, quality early child care and learning.
No voice teacher can be all things to all people. You have to gain information from whatever sources you can. You have to listen.
Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.
Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.
There is no better way to learn than to teach.
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