A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil’s environment who treats him with respect.
BEL KAUFMAN“Let it be a challenge to you” means you’re stuck with it; “interpersonal relationships” is a fight between kids; “ancillary civic agencies for supportive discipline” means call the cops.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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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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Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.
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To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
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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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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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The heart has its reasons; it’s the mind that’s suspect.
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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.
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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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I so enjoy being old because for the first time I don’t have to do anything-work, teach, study. I feel very good about myself-and at my age I can say no to anything now if I don’t want to do it. What a liberating word.
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Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.
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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.
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I like the word OLD. Not senior, that’s for proms. Older? Older than whom? ‘Old’ is honorable and ripe
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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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And that’s it; that’s why I want to teach; that’s the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.
BEL KAUFMAN