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 KAUFMANWhen giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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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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Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.
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Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
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To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
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“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.
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Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.
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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.
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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.
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People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.
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My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning.
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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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The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn’t it a magnificent day today?
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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 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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One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.
BEL KAUFMAN