Out of our cleverness has emerged something almost more important than the cleverness itself. Out of it has come learning about how to share ideas and pass down skills and knowledge. Out of it has come education.
— Gary Thomas (2013), contemporary British professor of educatior, editor, author
If education is not useful, what is it? Is it a talent, to be hidden away in a napkin? Of course, education should be useful, whatever your aim in life.
It was useful to Saint Augustine and it was useful to Napoleon. It is useful, because understanding is useful.
— Alfred North Whitehead (1916), influential English mathematician, philosopher, educator, popularizer of mathematics
Educational encounters should result in understanding, not mere performance. Understanding consists in grasping the place of an idea or fact in some more general structure of knowledge.
…A failure to equip minds with skills for understanding and feeling and acting in the cultural world is not simply scoring a pedagogical zero. It risks creating alienation, defiance, and practical incompetence. And all of these undermine the viability of a culture.
— Jerome S. Bruner (1996), American psychologist, educator, a founding father of cognitive psychology, author of The Culture of Education
But the cynic forgets that there are some people who never lose their illusions, — some men and women who are always young, — and, whatever may be the type of men and women that other callings and professions desire to enroll in their service, this is the type that education needs.
The great problem of the teacher is to keep himself in this class, to keep himself young, to preserve the very things that the cynic pleases to call the illusions of his youth.
— William Chandler Bagley (1911), American educator, editor, author of Craftsmanship in Teaching
If you could lead through testing, the U.S. would lead the world in all education categories. When are people going to understand you don't fatten your lambs by weighing them?
— attributed to Jonathan Kozol (ca 1996), contemporary American author, educator, activist, reformer
We don't have an education problem in America. We have a social disease. It is as though we are starving our children to death and trying to fix it by investing in more scales so we can weigh them constantly
— Steve Nelson (2013), contemporary American educator, author, reformer
Right now we value what we measure, instead of measuring what we value.
— John Merrow (2017), contemporary American journalist, author, educator
The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it.
— John Adams (1785), second President of the United States, attorney, writer, a founding father of the United States
The central value of a liberal [arts] education is that it teaches you how to write, and writing makes you think. Whatever you do in life, the ability to write clearly, cleanly, and reasonably quickly will prove to be an invaluable skill
…No matter who you are—a politician, a businessperson, a lawyer, a historian or a novelist—writing forces you to make choices and brings clarity and order to your ideas.
— Fareed Zakaria (2015), contemporary Indian-American journalist, political commentator, author
Educational accountability is usually based on narrowly-focused multiple-choice tests.
It is as if students were considered to have mastered Shakespeare if they could pass a timed vocabulary test in Elizabethan English, or that they had learned to write when they could correctly choose the grammatical form of a sentence from four possibilities.
— William P. Thurston (1990), influential American mathematician, educator, Fields medalist
But much that is thus extruded as of only antiquarian interest will often be found to be educationally of the highest value—assuming, of course, that it is reasonable to expect the order in which the individual can best appropriate knowledge to resemble, at any rate broadly, the order in which the human race at first ascertained and excogitated it.
— James Ward (1890), English psychologist, philosopher, author
Receiving [justification] at least once has a psychological value. It sets the mind at ease, whereas in the absence of understanding the mind remains perplexed and balks at performing.
The situation is somewhat the same as when an adult is called upon to donate money to charity. He wants to know why this charity and not some other.
Having satisfied himself, he gives freely rather than grudgingly; and in future years he gives without questioning because he remembers not why he chose this particular charity but merely that he satisfied himself that it was worthwhile.
So it is with skills. Having understood why and having learned how to perform them, in the future one performs them without hesitation. One need not and, in fact should not rethink through the why.
— Morris Kline (1977), American mathematician-historian, popularizer of mathematics, author of Why the professor can't teach : mathematics and the dilemma of university education