Tag Archives: cognition/learning/understanding

Wise Words from Africa on Willful Ignorance

“Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.”

African Proverb

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Learning about Learning

Kids who struggle to learn need all the help they can get. I work to incorporate into my teaching practice–I have a category of curriculum I simply call “Focus on Learning Methods”–readings that describe the act of learning. If our struggling students can understand the learning process, then they can begin to understand their own struggles with it. From there, students have a real opportunity to learn how they learn, and begin approaching the demands of school with an understanding of how they can meet them.

So, what use for the special education teacher in this situation? Little to none, I would hope–that’s the point of this. The students is autonomous, and the teacher has done his or her job. A pint of ale and a few episodes of “Family Guy,” anyone?

One of the many projects I have going is a unit on learning on cognition. Needless to say, this Intellectual Devotional reading on learning and the comprehension worksheet that accompanies it would form one of the mainstays of such a unit.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

William James on Cognition

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

William James

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

Cicero’s Advice for Modern Legislators

“What better or greater gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

James Bryant Conant on What Our Schools Can Be

“Religious tolerance, mutual respect between vocational groups, belief in the rights of the individual, are among the virtues that the best of our high schools now foster.”

James Bryant Conant (1893-1978) as quoted in The Teacher and the Taught (1963)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

Aristotle on the Elements of an Education

“At present there are differences of opinion…for all peoples do not agree as to the things that the young ought to learn, either with a view to virtue or with a view to the best life, nor is it clear whether their studies should be regulated more with regard to intellect or to regard to character.”

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

John Cotton Dana on the Gravamen of Teachers’ Professional Development

“Who dares to teach, must never cease to learn.”

John Cotton Dana (1856-1929)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

bell hooks on Teaching as an Exercise of Students’ Wills

“I entered the classroom with the conviction that is was crucial for me and every other student to be an active participant, not a passive consumer…education that connects the will to know with the will to become.”

bell hooksTeaching to Transgress (1994)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

Horace Mann on Education as a Human Right

“I believe in the existence of a great, immutable principle of natural law, or natural ethics which proves the absolute right of every human being that comes into the world to an education; and which, of course, proves the correlative duty of every government to see that the means of an education are provided for all.”

Horace Mann, as Quoted in Places for Learning, Places for Joy: Speculations on American School Reform by Theodore R. Sizer (1973)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

John Maynard Keynes on Education

“Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”

John Maynard Keynes

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.