Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
BEL KAUFMANMy 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.
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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Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.
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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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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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People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.
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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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One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.
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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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To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
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Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.
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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!
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… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
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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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When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.
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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.
BEL KAUFMAN