Galileo Got It

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
–Galileo Galilei
 

A twist on an old favorite

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. -African proverb
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This is a new and more interesting way to say "learn from your mistakes." I like it!

Eisenhower--a Texas boy

I saw a quote by President Eisenhower today and when I went to look up the full context of the quote, I found a plethora of really great things said by this man. We mostly think of Eisenhower as a Kansas boy as that is where he was raised and made his home. But he was born in Denison, Texas, just an hour north of the Dallas area. We claim him, too. :-)

I read a great quote that he made about education and when I went to find the source/context, I found these as well:

“The true purpose of education is to prepare young men and women for effective citizenship in a free form of government.”
Address at the College of William and Mary, May 15, 1953

"It is unwise to make education too cheap. If everything is provided freely, there is a tendency to put no value on anything. Education must always have a certain price on it; even as the very process of learning itself must always require individual effort and initiative."

Address, Centennial Celebration Banquet of the National Education Association, Washington, DC, 4/4/57  

And the one that started the search (and I still don't know the context):

A distinguishing characteristic of our nation - and a great strength - is the development of our institutions within the concept of individual worth and dignity. Our schools are among the guardians of that principle. Consequently . . . and deliberately their control and support throughout our history have been - and are - a state and local responsibility. . . . Thus was established a fundamental element of the American public school system - local direction by boards of education responsible immediately to the parents of children. Diffusion of authority among tens of thousands of school districts is a safeguard against centralized control and abuse of the educational system that must be maintained. We believe that to take away the responsibility of communities and states in educating our children is to undermine not only a basic element of our freedoms but a basic right of our citizens. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Jackpot

I love great quotes. I write them down in lots of places but I've never had them all in one place. I'm on a listserv for educators and this list of great quotes showed up in my emailbox today. This is what inspired me to start this blog.

"It takes time to create excellence. If it could be done quickly, more people would do it." John Wooden, basketball coach
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." Darrell Royal, football coach
"It does not matter how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up." Vince Lombardi, football coach
"No one has ever drowned in sweat." Lou Holtz, football coach
"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it." Lou Holtz, football coach
"Failing to prepare is preparing to fail." Wayne Gretzky, hockey
"You miss 100% of the shots you never take." Wayne Gretzky, hockey
"Talent is never enough. With few exceptions the best players are the hardest workers." Magic Johnson, basketball
"It's all about the journey, not the outcome." Carl Lewis, track and field
"If all I'm remembered for is being a good basketball player, then I've done a bad job with the rest of my life." Isiah Thomas, basketball
"The harder you work, the luckier you get." Gary Player, golf
"Excellence is not a singular act but a habit. You are what you do repeatedly." Shaquille O'Neal, basketball
"Set your goals high, and don't stop till you get there." Bo Jackson, football
"The only disability in life is a bad attitude." Scott Hamilton, figure skating
"For me, losing a tennis match isn't failure, it's research." Billie Jean King, tennis
"Confidence is the result of hours and days and weeks and years of constant work and dedication." Roger Staubach, football
"I'm proof that great things can happen to ordinary people if they work hard and never give up." Orel Hershiser, baseball
"Love never fails. Character never quits. And with patience and persistence, dreams do come true." Pete Maravich, basketball
"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." Herman Cain
"I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature." John D. Rockefeller
"Success is a journey, not a destination." Ben Sweetland

from: insidetheschoolmail.com

7/26/08 If you want to build a ship...

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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I saw this on the signature line of a member of a listserv that I'm on. Who knew that a quote about ship building could really be about inspirational teaching. :-)

Rules

The fewer rules a coach makes, the fewer rules there are to break.
John Madden

...and the same is true for a classroom. Dr. Theresa
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Shared by Newcomb in EDU 101-002, spring 2008 as part of the 5 quotes assignment.

what our schools used to be

Given the many demands made of schools today, the wonder is not that they do so poorly, but that they accomplish so much. Our society has stuffed additional burdens into the time envelope of 180 six-hour days without regard to the consequences for learning. We agree with the Maine mathematics teacher who said, "The problem with our schools is not that they are not what they used to be, but that they are what they used to be." In terms of time, our schools are unchanged despite a transformation in the world around them.

from 1994 Department of Education report Prisoners of Time

retrieved May 28, 2007 from http://www.ed.gov/pubs/PrisonersOfTime/Dimensions.html

Education is not a preparation for life but life itself

"I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living."

My Pedagogic Creed by John Dewey
School Journal vol. 54 (January 1897), pp. 77-80
ARTICLE TWO. WHAT THE SCHOOL IS

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That's the closest I can come to an actual quote by Dewey, though many many places you'll see, "Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself."

If you know the source of the second quote, please comment and share.

Einstein on problem solving (but not necessarily mathematical problems)

"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them."
---Albert Einstein

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This is the email signature of:
Dr Paul J Gies
Chair, or rather, "Chair,"
Dept. of Math & Computer Science

He's such a liberal arts thinker which is so fabulous but sometimes rare in math and science folks.

I read this and think of examples: NCLB is a problem that exists in the world today and truly there's no one in the Bush administration that can "solve" it . . . not only because they don't even understand that it's a problem but for the reasons that Einstein states, that level of thinking can't even comprehend how to undo the damage that's been done.