Tag Archives: philosophy/religion

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.

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.

Chronology (n)

I use this context clues worksheet on the noun chronology in the first week of school in any social studies class I teach. For reasons I don’t fully understand, we have too many students in my high school who don’t know this fundamental word.

It’s an important word and concept to know and use when discussing just about anything that occurs across a span of time.

If you find typos in this document, 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.

Bertrand Russell on Patriotism

“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.”

Bertrand Russell

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

Henry Peter Brougham on the Case for Free, Independent, Secular, and Public Education in One Sentence

“Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.”

Henry Peter Brougham in a Speech to the House of Commons (1828)

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

Clarence Darrow on History

“History repeats itself; that’s one of the things that’s wrong with history.”

Clarence Darrow

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

James Baldwin on Education as a Consciousness Raising Process

(Aside: Have you seen I Am Not Your Negro, the documentary about James Baldwin’s abandoned book, Remember This House? It’s a fine film, richly deserving of all the fulsome praise it has garnered. I highly recommend it.)

“The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.”

James Baldwin “The Negro Child—His Self Image” in The Saturday Review (1963)

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.