Gabriela Gallardo
Special Education Teacher, California
I am a special education teacher, and I had the
pleasure o having an autistic child in my classroom this year. Patric
was a fifth grader and this June, when he was promoted to sixth grade,
he surprised me with a gift that he was eager for me to open. After I
opened the present and saw that it was a beautiful table clock, Patric
quickly asked if I knew why he had gotten me a clock. I replied that I
didn't and to that he most lovingly anwered: "Because every time you
look at the clock you'll know I love you all the time."
Galileo Galilei
We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it
within themselves.
Indira Gandhi
My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those
who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be
in the first group; there was much less competition.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
The law of love could be best understood and
learned through little children.
If we are to attain real peace in this world, and if we
are to carry on a war against war, we will have to begin with the
children.
Lella Gandini
(American early childhood educator and writer)
All children have preparedness, potential, curiosity and interest in
constructing their learning, in engaging in social interaction and in
negotiating with everything the environment brings to them.
Jerry Garicia
of the Grateful Dead
Somebody has to do something, and it's
just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
She discovered with great delight
that one does not love one's children just because they are
one's children but because of the friendship formed while
raising them.
David P. Gardiner
(President University of Utah)
Much that passes for education . . . is not education at all but
ritual. The fact is that we are being educated when we know it
least.
James A. Garfield (American
president)
Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education,
without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently
maintained.
Stanley Garn
If the Aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, all of
Western civilization would presumably flunk it.
José Ortega Gasset
(Spanish philosopher and statesman
1883 - 1955)
He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but
simply suggest it with a brief gesture which starts an ideal
trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find . . . the new
truth.
Bill Gates
We at
Microsoft strongly believe that the single most important use of
information technology is to improve education.
John Taylor Gatto
I've taught public school for 26 years but I just can't do
it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and
superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn't hurt
kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I'm going to quit, I
think.
I've come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A
curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice,
vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to
quality, and utter dependency. I teach how to fit into a world
I don't want to live in.
I just can't do it anymore. I can't train children to wait to
be told what to do; I can't train people to drop what they are
doing when a bell sounds; I can't persuade children to feel
some justice in their class placement when there isn't any,
and I can't persuade children to believe teachers have
valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples.
That isn't true.
Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history.
It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of
childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.
David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In
normal development, when both are 13, you can't tell which one
learned first -- the five-year spread means nothing at all.
But in school I will label Rachel "learning disabled" and slow
David down a bit, too.
For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him
when to go and stop. He won't outgrow that dependency. I
identify Rachel as discount merchandise, "special education."
After a few months she'll be locked into her place forever.
In 26 years of teaching rich kids and poor, I almost never met
a "learning disabled" child; hardly ever met a "gifted and
talented" one, either. Like all school categories, these are
sacred myths, created by the human imagination. They derive
from questionable values we never examine because they
preserve the temple of schooling.
The Nine Assumptions of Modern Schooling
-
Government school is the
essential force for social cohesion. It cannot happen any
other way. A bureaucratized public order is our defense
against chaos and anarchy.
-
The socialization of children
in groups monitored by state agents is essential; without
this, children cannot learn to get along with others in a
pluralistic society.
-
Children from different
backgrounds and from families with different beliefs must be
mixed together. Robert Frost was wrong when he maintained
"good fences make good neighbors."
-
The certifiable expertise of
official schoolteachers is superior to that of lay people
including parents. The protection of children from the
uncertified is a compelling public concern.
-
Coercion in the name of
liberty is a valid use of state power. Compelling children
to assemble in mandated groups for mandated intervals with
mandated texts and overseers does not interfere with
academic learning.
-
Children will inevitably grow
apart from their parents in beliefs as they grow older and
this process must be supported and encouraged. The best way
to do this is by diluting parental influence and
discouraging the children's attitudes that their own parents
are sovereign in either mind or morality.
-
The world is full of crazy
parents who will ruin their children. An overriding concern
of schooling is to protect children from bad parenting.
-
It is not appropriate for any
family to unduly concern itself with the education of its
own children, but it may expend unlimited effort on behalf
of the general education of everyone.
-
The State has the predominant
responsibility for training, morals, and beliefs. Children
schooled outside government scrutiny frequently become
anti-social and poverty stricken.
From: Education and the Western
Spiritual Tradition
http://csf.colorado.edu/sine/transcripts/gatto.html (link
to full speech)
The net effect of holding a child in confinement for 12 years
and longer without any honor paid to the spirit is an extended
demonstration that the State considers the Western God
tradition to be dangerous. And, of course, it is. Schooling is
about creating loyalty to an abstract central authority, and
no serious rival can be welcome in a school that includes
mother and father, tradition, local custom, self-management,
or God.
The Supreme Court Everson ruling of 1947
established the principle that the State would have no truck
with spirits. There was no mention that 150 years of American
judicial history had passed without any other court finding
this fantastic hidden meaning in the Constitution.
But even if we forego an examination of the
motives of this court and grant that the ruling is a sincere
expression of the rational principle behind modern leadership,
we would be justified in challenging Everson today because of
the grotesque record laid down over the past 50 years of
spiritless schooling. Dis-spirited schooling has been tested
and found fully wanting. I personally think that that's
because it is a liar's game that denies the metaphysical
reality recognized by men and women worldwide today and in
every age.
Science cannot help with time. In fact,
living scientifically so as not to waste time, becoming one of
those poor souls who never goes anywhere without a list, is
the best guarantee that your life will be eaten up by errands
and that none of those errands will ever become the big deal
that you desperately need to finally love yourself because the
list of things still to do will go ever onward and onward. The
best lives are full of contemplation, full of solitude, full
of self-examination, full of private, personal attempts to
engage the metaphysical mystery of existence.
There must be a reason that we are called
human beings and not human doings. And I think the reason is
to commemorate the way we can make the best of our limited
time by alternating effort with reflection and reflection
completely free of the get-something motive. Whenever I see a
kid daydreaming in school, I'm careful never to shock the
reverie out of existence.
Bill Geiss
The sound of children at play is the closest thing to God's
own voice we shall ever hear.
A Bartlett Giamatti
(President Yale)
Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with
the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of
art or a market or a building.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
English historian
The love of study, a passion which derives great vigor from
enjoyment, supplies each day . . . with a perpetual round of
independent and rational pleasure.
W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
Oh don't the days seem lank and long
when all goes right and nothing goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at!
Haim Ginott
(Israeli psychologist 1922 - 1975)
The world talks to the mind. A teacher speaks more
intimately; he talks to the heart.
Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them
makes an impression.
It is my personal approach that
creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the
weather... I possess tremendous power to make a child's life
miserable or joyous. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides whether the
crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized
or de-humanized. Teacher and Child
Natalia Ginzburg
Children should be taught not the little virtues but the great
ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money;
not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not a
desire for success but a desire to be and to know.
Gail Godwin
(American writer b. 1937)
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths
theater.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(German writer 1749 - 1832)
A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good poem
accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows and rows of
natural objects, classified with name and form.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness
has genius, power, and magic in it.
One must ask children and birds how
cherries and strawberries taste.
When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is;
when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially
could be, we make him what he should be.
They teach in academies far too many things, and far
too much that is useless.
Correction does much, but
encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the
sun after a shower.
Jane Goodall
Respect for Life, in
Clifton Fadiman, ed., Living Philosophies (1990)
Our children are brutalized and insensitized if they are made
to pull the spinal cord from a living frog : it will be that
much easier, subsequently, to harm a dog, a chimpanzee - a
human. Thus a more humane ethic - a respect for all living
things -is desirable not only for the well-being of non-human
animals, but for our own spiritual development as well.
Emma Goldman
Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward
making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity
produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting
antagonism with each other.
No one has yet realized the wealth of
sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child.
The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
Raisa Gorbachev
Youth is, after all, just a moment, but it is the moment, the spark
that you always carry in your heart.
Thomas Gordon
Parent Effectiveness Training
"Why are children the last ones to be protected against the
potential evils of power and authority? Is it that they are
smaller, or that adults find it so much easier to rationalize
the use of power with such notions as 'Father knows best' or
'It's for their own good'?
Elinor Goulding Smith
It sometimes happens, even in the best of families, that a
baby is born. This is not necessarily cause for alarm. The
important thing is to keep your wits about you and borrow some
money.
Here is this baby and he
refuses to eat his solid food. ("Solid" in this case is a
euphemism for "squishy.") Are you a failure as a parent? Is he
a failure as a baby? Is the pediatrician a failure as a
pediatrician? Would the baby rather have a hot pastrami
sandwich? This brings us to the primary rule of baby raising,
which is the solution to this and all subsequent problems.
This rule must be followed faithfully, and practiced
regularly, and you should make it a habit to repeat it to
yourself ten times a day. It is the - Golden Rule - of raising
babies. LIE. Lie to your mother, lie to your sisters and
aunts, and above all, lie to all the other mothers you meet on
the street. When a newer mother than you asks for your help.
tell her you never had the least trouble. Your baby just loved
his mashed bananas on the first try.
The Complete Book of Absolutely Perfect Baby and Child Care
(1957)
Harry L. Gracey
(Sociologist)
While children's
perceptions of the world and opportunities for genuine spontaneity and
creativity are being systematically eliminated from the kindergarten,
unquestioned obedience to authority and rote learning of meaningless
material are being encouraged
John Gray
Children Are From Heaven
It is not giving children more that spoils them; it is giving
them more to avoid confrontation.
Vartan Gregorian Iranian-born
American teacher
But you always remember the teacher who said, "Bill, you're a
unique moment in history. You are a unique being. What are you
going to do to deserve that uniqueness?"
Robin Grill
Cultivating your Child's Emotional Intelligence
By re-activating our childhood feelings and memories,
children help us to highlight that which wants healing inside
each of us; and thus they furnish us with countless
opportunities for personal growth. Our children make us better
parents, but also better people, and in that regard they give
us as much as we give them. Without knowing it, they help to
shape our emotional intelligence as we contribute to theirs.
Angelina Grimke
We are commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as
with all our hearts, and we commit a great sin if we forbid or
prevent that cultivation of the mind in others which would
enable them to perform this duty.
Matt Groening
Families are about love and overcoming emotional torture.
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