Quotations

“The sooner we teach little children what a mighty truth lies in the Bible phrase As a man thinketh, so is he, the better for future generations.”

Emphasising the formative power of ideas in childhood education · Essay, Thought Force

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“The standardized curricular education requires results each day, each week, surely each month, with an accumulated measurable outcome at the end of each semester; creative education thinks in terms of years and even in spans of years.”

Measuring growth slowly rather than by weekly yield · Book, Creative Power

William Hughes Mearns

“The creative school cares not how inept and slovenly a lad may be the whole term, if it sees something personal and fine taking slow possession of him.”

Patience with awkward beginnings if a personal voice is taking shape · Book, Creative Power

William Hughes Mearns

“You teach me nothing if you do not teach me to do something.”

Original: Tu ne m'apprends rien si tu ne m'apprends à faire quelque chose. — Knowledge is valued most when it develops practical ability rather than remaining purely theoretical. · Cahiers (French)

Paul Valéry

“The game is to get them to knock up against each other qua students. After they’ve done that for three years at Oxford they’ll never forget it qua individuals.”

Kipling was quoting Rhodes on the lasting value of meeting people from different backgrounds. · Speech, Work in the Future, 1924, quoting Cecil Rhodes

Rudyard Kipling

“This anthology has not been compiled for the philologist, but for those who have learnt to speak broad Yorkshire at their mother's knee, and have not wholly unlearnt it at their schoolmaster's desk.”

Claiming dialect verse for native speakers rather than for specialists · Preface, Yorkshire Dialect Poems

Frederic William Moorman

“The students of the future must be permitted to study literature, and not merely about literature.”

A forceful argument for direct engagement with literature rather than allowing literary study to become detached from the works themselves. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

John Crowe Ransom

“To me the savage of the plains or the negro of the South is a truer poet than the scholar of Oxford.”

Sets lived feeling above academic polish · Essay, The Independent, June 1879

Joaquin Miller

“Let something be read that will open the class's mind rather than crack its head.”

Original: Darllener rhywbeth wna i'r dosbarth agor ei feddwl, ac nid agor y crib. — A humorous plea for education that opens the mind rather than overwhelming the learner · Address, Y Paratoad Goreu ar Gyfer y Weinidogaeth, 1895 (Welsh)

Watcyn Wyn

“It is our best and most powerful instructor.”

Sympathetic curiosity is treated as a moral school rather than idle gazing · Introductory Discourse, A Series of Plays, 1798

Joanna Baillie

“He has remained too long the passive recipient of other men's knowledge.”

Criticising a training that leaves students merely receptive · Inaugural lecture, A Plea for the Historical Teaching of History, 1904

Charles Harding Firth

“Let no one despise any means by which the intellect of a boy may be widened or strengthened.”

Advocating a broad and humane education · Autobiographical fragment, Chapter III (published posthumously, 1877)

Barry Cornwall

“She never complained and even when my eldest brother advanced in strength she persisted on his regular attendance at school.”

Remembers his mother's endurance and commitment to education · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“Your path has been smoothed for just that end. When Mr. Rhodes was brooding over his scheme of the scholarships, he used to say the game is to get them to knock up against each other.”

Emphasising the importance of opportunity and contact between people. · Speech, Work in the Future, 1924

Rudyard Kipling

“The professional morale of the professors is very high, but their critical morale is very low.”

His distinction between professional standing and the intellectual standards he expected from literary critics. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

John Crowe Ransom

“In some measure [may it] tend to make Sunday a pleasant day to children. May it help to teach them to praise God, the Father, Son, and Spirit; to contemplate life and death and their own hearts as Christians should”

Her hope that poetry would form young minds in faith and contemplation · Preface, The Sunday Book of Poetry

Cecil Frances Alexander

“The education for old age needs fully as many years.”

Arguing that growing old well requires deliberate lifelong preparation · Essay, The Heart of the New Thought

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“Above all, you go to a great school for self-knowledge.”

Making self-understanding the highest purpose of education · Essay, Eton Reform II, 1861

William Johnson Cory

“Your mind is your own to educate and direct.”

Emphasising personal responsibility for one's mental life · Essay, The Heart of the New Thought

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“The world demands a general education from us now; we therefore need not concern ourselves further with that. We must make the particular our own.”

Original: Eine allgemeine Ausbildung dringt uns jetzt die Welt ohnehin auf; wir brauchen uns deshalb darum nicht weiter zu bemühen, das Besondere müssen wir uns zueignen. — Goethe distinguishes broad education from the deeper task of developing individual knowledge and expertise. · Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years (German)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe