Tag Archives: philosophy/religion

A Memo to Education “Reformers” from Sherwood Anderson

“The whole object of education is…to develop the mind. The mind should be a thing that works.”

Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)

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

The Proverbial Joy of Skepticism

“The believer is happy; the doubter is wise.”

Hungarian Proverb

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

John Adams on Freedom and Education

“Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.”

John Adams (1736-1826)

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

Rotten Reviews: Voltaire on Hamlet

“It is a vulgar and barbarous drama, which would not be tolerated by the vilest populace of France, or Italy…one would imagine this piece to be the drunken savage.”

Voltaire, (1768), The Works of M. de Voltaire 1901

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

Emerson on the Importance of a Free Press

“Democracy becomes a government of bullies, tempered by editors.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Joseph Addison on Education as Sculptor

“What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.”

Joseph Addison (1672-1719), as quoted in The Spectator (1711)

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

Strategies for Creating Cognitive Apprenticeships

During the month of July, I generally try to work on planning and professional development, so I’ve had my nose in both for the past three weeks. The summer’s reading is The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, which, 205 pages in, I have not found as useful to my own practice as I did The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy. Still, there are plenty of important ideas articulated in the book (Cambridge University Press has thoughtfully posted as a giveaway this PDF of the introduction to the book, by its editor, R. Keith Sawyer; if you search The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy, you’ll find a couple of different PDFs from its pages for free download as well.)

One of the first articles in this volume is by Allan M. Collins, who, as you can see from his Wikipedia page, is an important figure in the learning sciences. I like his ideas about cognitive apprenticeship. Here is an outline describing cognitive apprenticeship strategies that I took from his article and typed into a Word document.

I hope you find it useful.

George Santayana on Advertising

“Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.”

George Santayana

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

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.

Edward C. Banfield on Intellectual Independence

“A good professor is a bastard perverse enough to think what he thinks is important, not what the government thinks is important.”

Edward C. Banfield, as Quoted in Life (1967)

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