Quotes About Learning

The following quote got me thinking along this line, "Nothing could be more absurd than an experiment in which computers are placed in a classroom where nothing else is changed" (Seymour Papert). It was Papert who compared constructivist learning to dirty dancing, a metaphor that goes with me into the classroom every day:

Papert (1993) characterizes behavioral approaches as "clean" teaching whereas constructivist approach are "dirty" teaching.Papert illustrates the differences between behavioral and constructivist teaching by contrasting the way Baby learned to dance in the movie Dirty Dancing with the traditional method:Clean learning reduces dance to formulas describing steps, and clean learning reduces math to formulas describing procedures to manipulate symbols. The formula for the fox-trot box step is strictly analogous to the formula for adding factions or solving equations. (Papert, 1993, p. 135).Dirty learning, by contrast, is emotional, complex, and intertwined with the learner's social, cultural, and cognitive context.

"Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors." (African Proverb)

"Information on its own is not enough to produce actionable knowledge… Looking beyond information, as we have tried to do, provides a richer picture of learning. Learning is usually treated as a supply-side matter, thought to follow teaching, training, or information delivery. But learning is much more demand driven. People learn in response to need. When people cannot see the need for what’s being taught, they ignore it, reject it, or fail to assimilate it in any meaningful way. Conversely, when they have a need, then, if the resources for learning are available, people learn effectively and quickly." (Book by Brown & Duguid, 2000)

"In short, learning is the process by which novices become experts.

" (John T. Bruer. Schools for Thought, 1999, page 13.)

"People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing." (Dale Carnegie)

"Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" (Lewis Carroll)

"An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself." (Albert Camus; French novelist, essayist and playwright, who received the 1957 Nobel Prize for literature.) 

"Learning without thinking is labor lost; thinking without learning is dangerous." (Chinese proverb)

"A clever person turns great troubles into little ones and little ones into none at all." (Chinese proverb)

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." (Chinese proverb)

"Do not fear going forward slowly; fear only to stand still." (Chinese proverb )

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." (Sir Winston Churchill)

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." (Sir Winston Churchill)

"Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all." (Arthur C. Clark)

Comment from Dave Moursund: It would have been nice if he has begun with "data is not information." In any event, this quote suggests the desirability of a five component list: data, information, knowledge, wisdom, and foresight.

Here is a related quote:

"The wisest mind has something yet to learn." George Santayana)

"Imagine a school with children that can read or write, but with teachers who cannot, and you have a metaphor of the Information Age in which we live." (Peter Cochrane)

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." (Confucius)

"Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand." (Confucius around 450 BC)

"The strongest memory is not as strong as the weakest ink." (Confucius, 551-479 B.C.)

"Ability will never catch up with the demand for it." (Confucius)

"The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell." (Confucius)

"Learning without thought is labor lost." (Confucius)

 "I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done." (Marie Curie)

"The most dangerous experiment we can conduct with our children is to keep schooling the same at a time when every other aspect of our society is dramatically changing." (Chris Dede, written statement to the PCAST panel, 1997)

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." (Charles Darwin)

"You don't just learn knowledge; you have to create it. Get in the driver's seat, don't just be a passenger. You have to contribute to it or you don't understand it." (Dr. W. Edwards Deming.  Dr. W. Edwards Deming is known as the father of the Japanese post-war industrial revival and was regarded by many as the leading quality guru in the United States.)

"Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier." (John

Dewey)

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." (Edsger Dijkstra)

"In their capacity as a tool, computers will be but a ripple on the surface of our culture. In their capacity as intellectual challenge, they are without precedent in the cultural history of mankind. " (Edsgar W. Dijkstra)

"What do you want to contribute?" (Peter Drucker)

"Knowledge does not come cheap. All developed countries spend something like a fifth of their GNP on the production and dissemination of knowledge. Formal schooling - schooling of young people before they enter the labor force - takes up about one tenth of GNP (up from 2 percent or so at the time of World War 1). Employing organizations spend another 5 percent of GNP on the continuing education of their employees; it may be more. And 3 to 5 percent of GNP is spent on research and development - on the production of new knowledge." (Peter F. Drucker. Post-Capitalist Society. Harper Business 1993 Page 186)Quoted material from (Peter F. Drucker. Post-Capitalist Society. Harper Business 1993The new technology of learning will have its first impact on universal literacy. Most schools throughout the ages have spent endless hours trying to teach things that are best learned rather than taught, that is, things that are being learned behaviorally and through drill, repetition, feedback. Here belong most of the subjects taught in elementary school, but also a good many of the subjects taught in later stages of the educational process. Such subjects - whether reading and writing, arithmetic, spelling, historical facts, biology, and even such advanced subjects as neurosurgery, medical diagnosis, and most of engineering - are best learned through a computer program. The teacher motivates, directs, encourages. The teacher, in fact, becomes a leader and a resource.In the schools of tomorrow the students will be their own instructors, with a computer program as their own tool.Historically, the elementary school has been totally labor-intensive. Tomorrow's elementary school will be heavily capital-intensive. (Peter F. Drucker. Post-Capitalist Society. Harper Business 1993 Page 198)

"Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest

of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences." (Freeman Dyson)

"Great ideas originate in the muscles." (Thomas A. Edison)

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do in the first place doesn't mean it's useless." ( Thomas A. Edison)

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." (Albert Einstein)

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." (Albert Einstein)

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." (Albert Einstein)

"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking." (Albert Einstein)

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." (T.S. Eliot)T.S. Eliot: Choruses from 'The Rock', Collected Poems 1909 - 1935.Endless invention, endless experiment,Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;Knowledge of speech, but not of the Word....Where is the Life we have lost in living?Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

"A great teacher makes hard things easy." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"If we haven't the brains to choose the best track—we should choose the track to better brains." (Bradley Felton)

"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." (Richard Feynman)

"An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages." (Bernard Le Bovier Fontenelle, mathematical historian, 1657-1757)"Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice." (Henry Ford)"When you're finished changing, you're finished." (Benjamin Franklin)"The things which hurt, instruct." (Benjamin Franklin)"Nothing gives an author so much pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by other learned authors." (Benjamin Franklin)"Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late." (Benjamin Franklin)"Never confuse motion with action." (Benjamin Franklin)"At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment." (Benjamin Franklin)"I am not a teacher. . . I am an awakener." (Robert Frost)"All things are difficult before they are easy." (Thomas Fuller, 1654-1734)"Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing his difficulties." (Evarist Galois, 1811-1832)"Be the change you want to see in the world" (M. Gandhi)"The future depends on what we do in the present." (Mahatma Gandhi)“It may well be easier to remember a list if one sings it (or dances to it). However, these uses of the ‘materials’ of an intelligence are essentially trivial. What is not trivial is the capacity to think musically.” (Howard Gardner)"An individual understands a concept, skill, theory, or domain of knowledge to the extent that he or she can apply it appropriately in a new situation." (Howard Gardner,  The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand, Simon & Schuster, 1999.)"... pedagogy is what our species does best. We are teachers, and we want to teach while sitting around the campfire rather than being continually present during our offspring's trial-and-error experiences." (Michael S. Gazzaniga, 1998, p 8)"Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)"Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper." (David Hilbert)"In times of change, the learner will inherit the earth while the learned are beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists." (Eric Hoffer)"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

"Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better." (Richard Hooker, Theologian)"Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise." (Grace Hopper)"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something." (Thomas H. Huxley)"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led." (Thomas Jefferson, 1812)"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure." (Samuel Johnson)"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child." (Carl Jung)"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." (Samuel Johnson) Boswell: Life. Accessed 9/12/01: http://www.samueljohnson.com/popular.html"Simple things should be simple. Complex things should be possible." (Alan Kay) Click here for additional Alan Kay quotations."Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn't violate too many of Newton's Laws!" (Alan Kay in 1971)"Now I feel as if I should succeed in doing something in mathematics, although I cannot see why it is so very important... The knowledge doesn't make life any sweeter or happier, does it?" (Helen Keller)"I am only one, but still I am one. I can not do everything, but still I can do something. And because I can not do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do." (Helen Keller)Omar Khayyam, a mathematician (and, also successful in other fields). http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Khayyam.html. Born: 18 May 1048 in Nishapur, Persia (now Iran) Died: 4 Dec 1131 in Nishapur, Persia (now Iran). He wrote:"The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.""All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem." (Martin Luther King Jr.)

"...we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher's task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child." (Dr. Maria Montessori)"Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence." (Morris Kline)"If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe." (Abraham Lincoln)"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." (Abraham Lincoln)"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will." (Vince Lombardi)"One change leaves the way open for the introduction of others." (Machiavelli)"In this Commonwealth, there are 3,000 public schools, in all of which the rudiments of knowledge are taught. These schools, at the present time, are so many distinct independent communities; each being governed by its own habits, traditions, and local customs. There is no common, superintending power over them; there is no bond of brotherhood or family between them. They are strangers and aliens to each other. As the system is now administered, if any improvement in principles or modes of teaching is discovered by talent or accident, in one school, instead of being published to the world, it dies with the discoverer. No means exist for multiplying new truths, or preserving old ones." (Horace Mann, 1837) See http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast/pdf/Chapter_One.pdf Horace Mann's Vision of the Public Schools: Is It Still Relevant? (Paperback) by William Hayes."I don't know who discovered water but it wasn't a fish!" (Marshall McLuhan)“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: indeed; it's the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead)"What we do in life echoes through eternity" (Maximus Decimus Meridius)"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity." (Charles Mingus)"No computer has ever been designed that is ever aware of what it's doing; but most of the time, we aren't either." ( Marvin Minsky)"One striking fact is that the complex world of education—unlike defense, health care, or industrial production—does not rest on a strong research

base. In no other field are personal experience and ideology so frequently relied on the make policy choices, and in no other field is the research base so inadequate and little used." (Improving Student Learning, National Research Council, 1999)"A book is made better by good readers and clearer by good opponents." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions, 1879)"It is a poor carpenter who blames his tools." (Old adage)"The reason most kids don't like school is not that the work is too hard, but that it is utterly boring." (Seymour Papert)"Nothing could be more absurd than an experiment in which computers are placed in a classroom where nothing else is changed." (Seymour Papert)"Chance favors only the prepared mind." (Louis Pasteur)"Fortune favors the prepared mind." (Louis Pasteur)"If women are to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things." (Plato, 428-347 B.C.)"If we desire to form individuals capable of inventive thought and of helping the society of tomorrow to achieve progress, then it is clear that an education which is an active discovery of reality is superior to one that consists merely in providing the young with ready-made wills to will with and ready-made truths to know with…" (Jean Piaget, The Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child, The Viking Press, 1971.)"If you don't know where you are going, you're likely to end up somewhere else." (Lawrence J. Peter, of "Peter's Principles" fame. Peter's Principle states that employees within a hierarchical organization will advance to their highest level of competence, be promoted to a level at which they are incompetent, and then stay in that position. http://www.basicclassics.com/people/people.php?aid=149.I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter." "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que d'habitude parce que je n'ai pas eu laloisir de la faire plus courte." (Blaise Pascal, almost 400 years ago.)"Chance favors only the prepared mind." (Louis Pasteur)"Fortune favors the prepared mind." (Louis Pasteur)"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." (George S. Patton Jr.: World War II general )"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything." (John Edward Phelps)"If women are to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things." (Plato, 428-347 B.C.)

“Necessity is the mother of invention.” (Plato, The Republic)"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled." (Plutarch; Greek historian and biographer )"Mathematics consists of content and know-how. What is know-how in mathematics? The ability to solve problems." (Polya, 1971, p. 574)."Once you have learned how to ask relevant and appropriate questions, you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know." Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. Teaching as a Subversive Activity.Chapter 5 of Marc Prensky's 2001 book "Digital Game-Based Learning" contains a number of good quotes related to games and education. See http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Game-Based%20Learning-Ch5.pdf"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." (Will Rogers)"It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." (Franklin D. Roosevelt) "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." (Bertrand Russell)"Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are." (George Santayana) "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (George Santayana)“Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we re-perceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning” (Peter Senge, 1990)"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance." (George Bernard Shaw)“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” (George Bernard Shaw)"Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week." (George Bernard Shaw)"The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them." (George Bernard Shaw)“You see things and say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were, and I say, ‘Why not?’” (George Bernard Shaw)"It is bad enough to reinvent the wheel. What really hurts is when they reinvent the flat tire." (Lee Shulman, Stanford University)

"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether people do." (B.F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement,1969) "Adults are obsolete children." (Dr. Seuss)"My purpose as one of the founders of the field has been to give the anthropology of education a focus by defining our special area to be cultural transmissiion. I go further now by claiming that we are primarily concerned, as a discipline, with intentional invervention in the learning process... All societies intervene, literally interfere, with what children are learning at critical points throughout the entire development process. (George Spindler)" Further, we see that aspect of cultural transmission in which we are most interested—education in the broad sense, schooling in she narrower sense… —as a calculated intervention in the learning process". (George Spindler)"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." (Two dogs talking to each other, in a New Yorker carton by Peter Steiner, July 5, 1993) Accessed 10/29/05: http://www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/academics/dri/idog.html.

The above cartoon by Peter Steiner has been reproduced from page 61 of July 5, 1993 issue of The New Yorker, (Vol.69 (LXIX) no. 20) only for academic discussion, evaluation, research and complies with the copyright law of the United States as defined and stipulated under Title 17 U. S. Code.

Legend holds that J. J. Thomson, discoverer of the electron in 1897, had a favorite toast: "To the electron--may it never be of any use to anybody.""The illiterate of the 21st century will not be the one who can not read and write, but the one who can not learn, unlearn, and relearn." (Alvin Toffler)"Future shock [is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time." (Alvin Toffler)"If you cannot convince them, confuse them." (Harry S. Truman)"To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler, and less trouble." (Mark Twain)"Mankind owes to the child the best it has to give." (United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1959)"Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real." (Jules Verne)"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them." (Alfred North Whitehead)Wiggins, G. (November 1989). The futility of trying to teach everything of importance, Educational Leadership. Retrieved 7/3/06: http://www.elm.maine.edu/library/pdf/futility.pdf.

Students cannot possibly learn everything of value by the time they leave school, but we can instill in them the desire to keep questioning throughout their lives.…Conventional curriculums reinforce the idea that knowledge is uncontroversial or self-evident, when the opposite is often true. The test for a modern curriculum is whether it enables students, at any level, to see how knowledge grows out of, resolves, and produces questions. Rather than the TV-view that by the end of a class or school career all the "answers" have been "taught" and tied together in a happy ending, closure would consist of taking stock of the current state of the boundary between one's knowledge and ignorance, and gauging the depth of one's grasp of the questions.

"Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." (John Wooden, basketball coaching legend)Woodrow Wilson, like most Americans of his time, despised mathematics, complaining that "the natural man inevitably rebels against mathematics, a mild form of torture that could only be learned by painful processes of drill." Page 52, A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar."If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger."  (Frank Lloyd Wright)Quotes with Comments"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." (A familiar adage.)Dave comment: There is a difference between teachers being responsible for teaching, and teachers being responsible for student learning. For the learner, there is natural intrinsic motivation that is built in genetically, there is intrinsic motivating that develops as a combination of nature and nurture, and there is extrinsic motivation. A teacher is responsible for creating "good" learning environments and providing "good" encouragement. But, learning takes place in the mind/body of the learner. If/when the mind/body is genetically and internally ready and predisposed to learn, it learns. Note that these types of assertions are also closely related to the constructivist theory of learning.As I ponder this situation, I come to the conclusion that in teaching a group of students, we could think about measuring the "goodness" of the teacher in terms of an analysis or profile of the "goodness" from the point of view of each individual learner. All of the learners are interacting with the teacher, each other, the classroom environment, the school environment, peers, parents, siblings, etc. Thus, there are a huge number of "independent"

variable that affect the "dependent" variable we call student learning. Moreover, there are a huge number of components in student learning. For example, we may want a student to make progress in learning to learn, ion becoming an independent and self-sufficient lifetime learning, in learning from peers, in helping peers to learn, and so on. My conclusion is that the complexity of the situation under discussion is overwhelming.That does not mean that a teacher cannot make progress toward becoming a better teacher, nor does it mean that we cannot provide some help for a teacher working to become a better teacher. It suggests, however, that we need to think about helping a teacher get better from a constructivist and a learning theory point of view. We want to help the teacher develop "better" teaching knowledge and skill, building on current knowledge and skill. We have a number of learning theories. It seems to me that some of the learning theories are good enough so that student learning is helped by a teacher learning and appropriately implementing some of these learning theories.This discussion fits in well with considering the topic of highly interactive intelligent computer-assisted learning HIICAL) Within limited learning areas (topics), some HIICAL systems exist that are better than human teachers. This is not surprising when one considers the number of learner variable that need to be attended to, the variety of learning goals, the advantages of individualization, and so on."The valid test of a student is his ability to ask the right questions. I would suggest that we evolve a new type of examination paper, one in which the answers are given -- the questions to be supplied by the student." (Abraham Heschel, 1960)"The current heated debate over the use of statewide standardized testing to measure children's educational progress brings to mind the wonderfully contrarian wisdom of Abraham Heschel, a powerful and prophetic voice of an earlier generation. In a 1960 essay, Heschel, a pre-eminent Jewish theologian and beloved seminary professor, tossed out this gem: "The valid test of a student is his ability to ask the right questions. I would suggest that we evolve a new type of examination paper, one in which the answers are given -- the questions to be supplied by the student." In other words, let's teach young people not just a whole lot of facts; let's help them learn how to think. In this passionate editorial, Chi-Dooh Li describes why, in a democratic society, the ability of citizens to engage in critical thinking must rank high on our list of educational objectives." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/93521_skip31.shtml (Public Education Network PEN@PublicEducation.org) 2/31/02"A legend in his own mind." (A number of years ago, Beth Moursund, one

of Dave Moursund's young children referring to her father.)Dave comment: Boy, talk about hitting the nail on its head!"The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease." (Voltaire) [Note to self. Does this describe the current status of education? Medicine has certainly moved far beyond the situation that is described.]"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." (Voltaire)Dave comment: Question asking (problem posing) is an important idea, and I have several quotations on this topic.