I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.
BEL KAUFMAN… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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I’ll never retire as long as I live—that’s like retiring from life! I’ll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you’re in good health, living is exciting on its own.
BEL KAUFMAN -
If a teacher wants to know something why doesn’t she look it up herself instead of making we students do it? We benefit ourselves more by listening to her, after all she’s the teacher!
BEL KAUFMAN -
Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.
BEL KAUFMAN -
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.
BEL KAUFMAN -
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.
BEL KAUFMAN -
You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy.
BEL KAUFMAN -
… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
BEL KAUFMAN -
I like the word OLD. Not senior, that’s for proms. Older? Older than whom? ‘Old’ is honorable and ripe
BEL KAUFMAN -
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 -
I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
BEL KAUFMAN -
The heart has its reasons; it’s the mind that’s suspect.
BEL KAUFMAN -
The clerical work is par for the course. “Keep on file in numerical order” means throw in wastebasket. You’ll soon learn the language.
BEL KAUFMAN -
I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot.
BEL KAUFMAN -
People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.
BEL KAUFMAN -
One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.
BEL KAUFMAN -
“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.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.
BEL KAUFMAN -
When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.
BEL KAUFMAN -
To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months’ summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect.
BEL KAUFMAN -
The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn’t it a magnificent day today?
BEL KAUFMAN -
Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
BEL KAUFMAN