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.
BEL KAUFMANChildren are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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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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Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy.
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… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
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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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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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One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.
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Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.
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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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Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.
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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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Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.
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When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.
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Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
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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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The clerical work is par for the course. “Keep on file in numerical order” means throw in wastebasket. You’ll soon learn the language.
BEL KAUFMAN