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 KAUFMANTime collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
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.
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The clerical work is par for the course. “Keep on file in numerical order” means throw in wastebasket. You’ll soon learn the language.
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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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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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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 suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen
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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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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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The heart has its reasons; it’s the mind that’s suspect.
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… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
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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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I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
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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.
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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.
BEL KAUFMAN