… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
BEL KAUFMANEducation can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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“Language Arts Dept.” is the English office; “literature based on child’s reading level and experiential background” means that’s all they’ve got in the Book Room; “non-academic-minded” is a delinquent; and “It has come to my attention” means you’re in trouble.
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You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.
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One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.
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I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen
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When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.
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Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
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Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.
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Best marks go to cheaters and memorizers. Marks depend on memorizing and not on real knowledge. When you cram into your head for a test you may get a high mark but forget it the next day. That’s not an education.
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I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
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Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.
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Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.
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Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.
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I am writing this during my lunch period, because I need to reach towards the outside world of sanity, because I am overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the clerical work still to be done, and because at this hour of the morning normal ladies are still sleeping.
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Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
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Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.
BEL KAUFMAN