One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.
BEL KAUFMANTeachers 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.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
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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 had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
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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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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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Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.
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To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
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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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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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The heart has its reasons; it’s the mind that’s suspect.
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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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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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Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
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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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A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil’s environment who treats him with respect.
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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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Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.
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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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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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Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.
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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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I like the word OLD. Not senior, that’s for proms. Older? Older than whom? ‘Old’ is honorable and ripe
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… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
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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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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