RANDOM QUOTES ON TEACHING


FIRST QUOTE:

         "When a student makes silly blunders or is exasperatingly slow, the trouble is almost always the
same; he has no desire at all to solve the problem, even no desire to understand it properly, and so he
has not understood it. Therefore, a teacher wishing seriously to help the student should, first of all, stir up his
curiosity, give him some desire to solve the problem. The teacher should also allow some time for the student
to make up his mind, to settle down to his task."
         "Teaching to solve problems is an education of the will. Solving problems which are not too easy for him,
the student learns to persevere through unsuccess, to appreciate small advances, to wait for the essential idea,
to concentrate with all his might when it appears. If the student had no opportunity in school to familiarize
himself with the varying emotions of the struggle for the solution, his mathematical education failed in the most vital
point."

(From "How to Solve It", by G.Polya, 1945)
       

SECOND QUOTE:

      "Sit down", I say to the visitor. "What do you have to say?"
      "Excuse me for bothering you, Professor..." he begins, stammering and not looking
in my face. "I wouldn't have ventured to bother you if it hadn't been...I've taken your
examination five times and...and failed. I beg you, be so kind to pass me, because..."
        The argument all lazy students give in their favor is ever the same: they have passed
all their courses splendidly and failed only mine, which is the more surprising since they have
always studied my subject most diligently and have an excellent knowledge of it; if they have failed,
it is owing to some inexplicable misunderstanding.
       "Excuse me, my friend", I say to the visitor, "but I cannot pass you. Go read over the lectures and
come back. Then we'll see".
       A pause. The urge comes over me to torment the student a bit more for liking beer and the
opera more than science, and I say with a sigh:
       "In my opinion, the best thing you can do now is abandon the study of medicine entirely. If, with your
abilities, you cannot manage to pass the examination, then you obviously have neither the desire nor the vocation
to become a doctor".

(From the story "A boring story", by Anton Chekhov, November 1889)


THIRD QUOTE:

"Then again, there were times he was forced to believe the exact opposite: that his students had neither respect
nor affection for him. He sat idle during his twice-weekly office hours, as did most of his aged colleagues[...]
His office hours were an empty detention, unvisited and unproductive for him, no matter how he pretended. Each
afternoon he would carefully stand the door open twelve inches, or the width someone needed to duck in casually
and say hi; not wide open, as if in eager anticipation, and not merely slightly ajar, as if he begrudged his time for
his students. He didn't."

(From "A Person of Interest", novel by Susan Choi, 2008)

FOURTH QUOTE:

"Over the last few years, in the course of many parent conferences and elementary-school curriculum nights, I’ve become familiar
with the concept of the “just-right book.” This, my children’s teachers patiently explain, is a book that is perfectly suited to a child’s
reading ability: neither too easy, in which case he or she will grow bored, nor too difficult, which risks frustration and confusion.

I defer to the pedagogical expertise of the professionals, but something in me nonetheless rebels against the idea that the books children
choose should always be safely within their developmental comfort zone. There is pleasure to be found in bewilderment, in the struggle to
make sense of what is just above your head, and there is wisdom as well."

(From `Take the Kids, and Don't Feel Guilty', commentary by NY Times movie critic
A.O.Scott on the film `Persepolis'- New York Times,  January 11, 2008).

FIFTH QUOTE:

"Not a word was said to us about the meaning or utility of mathematics: we were simply asked to explain how an equilateral triangle
could be constructed by the intersection of two circles, and to do sums in a,b, and x instead of pence and shillings, leaving
me so ignorant that I concluded that a and b must mean eggs and cheese and x nothing, with the result that I rejected
algebra as nonsense, and never again changed my opinion until in my advanced twenties Graham Wallas and Karl Pearson convinced me
that instead of being taught mathematics I had been made a fool of."

(From "The Vice of Gambling and the Virtue of Insurance", by Geoerge Bernard Shaw, in "The World of Mathematics"m J.R.Newman
(ed.), 1956. Quoted in "Probability  Theory and Finance" by I.Dineen, AMS (2005), p.23)

SIXTH QUOTE:
"I learned to rethink each lesson, from class to class as well as from year to year, and to adjust my lesson plans according to the students in each class. That’s the hard part, thinking more about the students than about the content. It is probably the biggest challenge for many career switchers. One doesn’t have to be their buddy, but one has to build relationships of trust. Through that trust students become willing to try when they are struggling, or to go further even when at first it seems easy. "

(NYT 4/19/09, Kenneth Bernstein - social studies teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Md. He blogs about education and other subjects  as tearcherken at the Daily Kos)

David Foster Wallace 2005 Kenyon College commencement speech
(recalled in the NYT 4/25/2009-book section)
SEVENTH QUOTE:  NYT reader comment
April 27, 2009 5:18 pm
In my opinion, the "dirty little secret" of higher education is this: the lives of most faculty are made easier to the extent that they demand little or nothing of their students, and so they do not.

— jackiemac, Jamestown, NY

(Recommended by 1 Reader)

EIGHTH QUOTE:

“At [math summer] camp following his first year [as a student at Leningrad University], [Grisha] Perelman served as an instructor to a remarkable group of mathematicians two years younger than he… Every morning Perelman gave them a set of twenty problems—roughly double the club’s usual semi-weekly dose. The problems were extremely difficult, and the level of difficulty was increased with little regard for the students’ actual abilities and achievements. The general concept was always that the carrot should be hanging just barely above the level to which the rabbit could jump. But Grisha believed that the rabbit should always be jumping higher and higher. A student who failed to solve at least half of the problems by midday was told he or she could not have lunch.”

(From Perfect Rigor, by Masha Gessen, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston/New York 2009, pp. 96-7)

NINTH QUOTE:

Ein Schulmeister hat lieber zehn notorische Esel als ein Genie in seiner Klasse, und genau betrachtet hat er ja recht, denn seine Aufgabe ist es nicht, extravagante Geister heranzubilden, sondern gute Lateiner, Rechner und Biedermänner. Wer aber mehr und Schwereres vom anderen leidet, der Lehrer vom Knaben oder umgekehrt, wer von beiden mehr Tyrann, mehr Quälgeist is, und wer von beiden es ist, der dem anderen Teile seiner Seele und seines Lebens verdirbt und schändet, das kann man nicht untersuchen, ohne bitter zu werden.

(From Unterm Rad, by Hermann Hesse, Suhrkamp ed. 1975)