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.
BEL KAUFMANEducation is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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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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Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
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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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“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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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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Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.
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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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A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil’s environment who treats him with respect.
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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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Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.
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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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When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.
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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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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 suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen
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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.
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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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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 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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Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
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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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Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.
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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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Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.
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Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.
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People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.
BEL KAUFMAN