|
Favourite Quotes on Education
I hope you enjoy my rather long collection of quotes (over 150!) There's always room for more so if you have a favourite educational quote you'd like to add please email me.
"When we work with nature instead of trying to impose our will, the solution is often found within the problem." David Holmgren, 2002
"School, with its embedded message to one-up our classmates to be seen favorably by the people in power is a colonizer mentality, and it forces us to look at other people’s success as a threat to our own." Akilah S. Richards
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Your work is your love made visible."
Kahlil Gibran
"One of the unexpected things when we started homeschooling was how NORMAL it felt." Kae, home educating parent
"I was unschooled back in the day. My beautiful mum would occasionally (usually in line with school holidays), say something like, "Ok, I'm taking a break for a week." And I would be confused, a break from what? Letting us do whatever we want to all day?!? How hard can that be?!?
It wasn't until recently that I realised exactly what she meant. My mum occasionally needed a break from leading us and helping us, all without us even realising she was doing anything. (Being an unsc hooling parent is like being a sneaky mind reading ninja). She needed a break from being constantly in tune with four children, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (Being an unschooling parent is a very selfless thing to do).
So massive props to all of us! As unschooling parents we can only high-five ourselves, because if we're doing it right, no one else will know, for they will say they did it themselves." Serene Johnson
"I do what I do because I know how valuable the sharing of lived experience is, and also because most of what we know about child development in our society comes from researchers studying children in classrooms - institutionalized settings. There is no information about how children grow and learn without school other than what we, home educating parents, are creating. That makes it vital and important work." Beverley Paine
"Unschooling is an attitude - it's saying "I'm learning because that's the nature of me, I'm a learner, and I'm learning what I need to learn from this situation and not what you or anyone else wants or needs me to learn." Empowering our children to continue to think like this (from birth onwards) is our role as unschooling parents." Beverley Paine
“When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That's if you want to teach them to think.” Bertrand Russell
"There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain...there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment."
Anne Dillard
"Unschooling is essentially a curiosity-led approach to learning without testing and predefined curricula. Unschoolers see learning as an organic byproduct of living and being a child, so we reject the premise of passing information from adults and books to children, based on what is believed (by adults) to be necessary learning. Children follow their interests, and their parents offer resources for their children to pursue and explore what they enjoy." Akilah S. Richards
"If schooling teaches literacy and numeracy in a way that kids cannot pass it down to their own children without a 3-year university teaching degree, I would say something has gone terribly wrong... Yet that is how most adults feel about their ability to teach their own children! How disempowering!" Nicolas Connault
"Well, they learn, you see, children want to learn. I
think healthy children just, you can't stop them learning and so you've got to provide, it's a matter of provision. You create an
environment where they are keen and eager to, and curious, and so, ... Children's eyes go to
things, they sparkle when they see something, so you say, "OK, we'll
go there. We follow that". You follow things. ...
that's why I'm home educating them so that at the centre they're strong because it's a big, wild world out there. See people would caricature this as a narrow, parochial view. I see it as the opposite. I think it's trusting that the child has a soul that wants to open up to all the world. Make it strong, let the child be strong at the beginning. Let the soul centre be happy and solid and strong and it can cope with whatever comes. Creativity is the way through and I think so much creativity is crushed in education." Michael Leunig, on homeschooling his children.
"...natural curriculum is a set of existential questions. They include: Who am I? Who are you? Who are they? Where do we belong? Who gets what? How do we find out? Where are we going? How am I doing?
Who decides what? What is fair, right or just?"
http://www.freeplaynetwork.org.uk/new/pccrm.htm
“[A] danger of formal schooling is that it will imprint a disciplinary template onto impressionable minds and with it the belief that the world really is as disconnected as the divisions, disciplines, and subdisciplines of the typical curriculum. Students come to believe that there is such a thing as politics separate from ecology or that economics has nothing to do with physics. Yet, the world is not this way, and except for the temporary convenience of analysis, it cannot be broken into disciplines and specializations without doing serious harm to the world and to the minds and lives of people who believe that it can be. We often forget to tell students that the convenience was temporary, and more seriously, we fail to show how things can be made whole again. One result is that students graduate without knowing how to think in whole systems, how to find connections, how to ask big questions, and how to separate the trivial from the important. Now more than ever, however, we need people who think broadly and who understand systems, connections, patterns, and root causes.” David W. Orr, “The Dangers Of Education”
"I don't care to motivate my children by telling them that they will have to be strong to survive the ruthless competition. I'd rather tell them that the world needs their wisdom, their talents, and their kindness, so much so that the possibilities for a life of service are without limits of any kind. I'd like to share with them the open
secret that this is the path to receiving what one needs in a lifetime, and to becoming strong." (AERO-Gramme, No. 25, Fall 1998, http://www.freeplaynetwork.org.uk/new/pccrm.htm )
"To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one's self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed wi th enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - this is to have succeeded." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Traditional society was more like a set of concentric circles of meaningful structures, while modern man must learn how to find meaning in many structures to which he is only marginally related. In the village, language and architecture and religion and work and family customs were consistent with one another, mutually explanatory and reinforcing. To grow into one implied a growth into others." Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society
"Once when John Holt was speaking to a school audience, describing his views on the structured curriculum, a student asked him, "But surely there must be something important enough that everyone should learn it?" He thought for a moment and replied, "To learn to say 'I'm sorry', 'I don't know', and 'I was wrong'." John Holt
"Every moment in my life is a transformative moment. Work on meeting your needs instead of your wants. We found that this works to declutter our lives so that there is more room for what we really want to materialise. Much of what wanted we didn't really want at all - it was generally what we would settle for when our needs weren't being met." Beverley Paine
"Libraries are more important than colleges; . . . I spent three days a week for ten years educating myself in the public library, finding mirrors for myself in hundreds of books. At the end of ten years, I was completely educated. I had read every goddamn book in the library, and I'd written a thousand stories." Ray Bradbury, OnGratitude
"ADHD is NOT a real "disorder". It is a collection of symptoms of what happens to children when you box them up for 6 hours (and more with homework) a day doing mindless paperwork that is boring, irrelevant and tedious. It is what happens when children are deprived of play, fun, compassion and human connection. Many children, mostly boys, are "diagnosed" with 'ADHD' for NATURAL behaviour! Children of all ages are WIRED to play, jump, run, talk, laugh, explore with their hands and feel overpowered with curiosity! Can't adults see the happiness and joy on children's faces when they are totally free to be involved with hands-on, highly physical play? Do adults see joy, rapture, passion and excitement on children's faces when they are sitting at desks forced to complete paperwork?" Laurie A Couture
"It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well
enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for 'basic skills' practice
is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years
and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you." John Gatto
"I have seen many times over that there is no need to 'transmit' those skills at all; children in our culture will pick them up when they're ready (ie. when they perceive a need for them). Some may need our help but most won't even notice that it's happening." Wendy Priesnitz
"You can never get the outcome you want by pushing against what you don't want. It's one thing to understand this point, another to live it." Drew Rozell
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free
that your very existence is an act of rebellion." Albert Camus "We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years,
and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I believe it would be much better for everyone if children were given their start
in education at home. No one understands a child as well as his mother,
and children are so different that they need individual training and study.
A teacher with a room full of pupils cannot do this. At home, too, they are in their mother's care.
She can keep them from learning immoral things from other children." Laura Ingalls Wilder
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school." Albert Einstein
“One of the things I love about the way we educated our children is that they now remind me that learning is life-long. I can learn whatever I want to now or at any age. If the need to learn is there and it is important to me, then I will either be motivated or motivate myself to learn.” Beverley Paine
“Only you know what is best for your family, deep in your heart you know. Follow that dream. Contrary to what we've been brainwashed to believe, we don't need to work harder to achieve it - we simply need to relax more and let go of the expectations that we will fail.” Beverley Paine
“Work playfully, play workfully. That's what kids naturally do. We can take a leaf from their book, learn that lesson and stop judging as good, bad or enough what we do all the time.” Beverley Paine
"Don't worry about your child's age or grade. Just let him do the best he can each day. Children grow intellectually like they do physically: in spurts. Although we may have an audience of skeptical relatives, homeschooling is not a circus, and we refuse to train our children to do tricks for people." Collette Longo
"My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself." George Bernard Shaw
"Never memorize something that you can look up." Albert Einstein
"You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library." Will Hunting (movie: Good Will Hunting - Matt Damon's directing debut)
"An alarming number of parents appear to have little confidence in their ability to "teach" their children. We should help parents understand the overriding importance of incidental teaching in the context of warm, consistent companionship. Such caring is usually the greatest teaching, especially if caring means sharing in the activities of the home." Raymond S. Moore, School Can Wait
"We don't need to be taught how to learn: we're born knowing and wanting to. It's our nature, our genes, our biological inheritance. The hardest thing for parents to learn is hands-off. Teach less, not more." John Holt
"The modern world is dangerous, confusing, not meant for children, not generally kind or welcoming to them. We have much to learn about how to make the world more accessible to them, and how to give them more freedom and competence in exploring it. But this as a very different thing from designing nice little curricula." John Holt, in Teach Your Own
"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." Albert Einstein
"Little children love the world. That is why they are so good at learning about it. For it is love, not tricks and techniques of thought, that lies at the heart of all true learning. Can we bring ourselves to let children learn and grow through that love?" John Holt
"Whenever I had second thoughts about the socialization my children may have been missing by homeschooling, I'd take them to a G-rated matinee movie. One look around the theater at the running, screaming, popcorn-throwing little socialites was enough to overcome my doubts." Mario Pagnoni in The Complete Home Educator (one of the first books I read on the subject of home education!)
"Relax. Getting organised with homeschooling is not as important as you think it is. Relaxing, on the other hand, is more important than you think it is."
Beverley Paine
""Ask questions to find out something about the world itself, not to find out whether or not someone knows it." John Holt
"If you can just immerse yourself in your life, it doesn't matter what you do everyday. Just do it intensely. Be in it, so that when you go to sleep you're exhausted every night and you say, 'Whoa, I just couldn't have done any more with that day.' "
Diana Nyad
"When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful." Barbara Bloom
"It is essential to teach the three R's: Respect for self; Respect for others;Responsibility for actions.The equipment needed for teaching these is simple, yet challenging, but also easily sourced within the homeschool: Time, Patience, Love and Understanding." Anonymous
"Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen."
Goethe
"Homeschooling should be enormously enjoyable, not tedious. Enjoy your mothering years and don't drag it down with other's expectations." Geradine, home educating mum
"When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and judgment. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change." Thich Nhat Hanh
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." Albert Einstein
"While intelligent people can often simplify the complex, a fool is more likely to complicate the simple." Dr. Gerald Grumet
"In times of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." Eric Hoffer
"If I had to make a general rule for living and working with children, it might be this: be wary of saying or doing anything to a child that you would not do to another adult, whose good opinion and affection you valued." John Holt
"A good intention clothes itself with power." Ralph Waldo Emerson
" If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room."
Anita Roddick
" Every human action, whether it has become positive or negative, must depend on motivation." Dalai Lama
"If people just asked: "Here are the needs of both sides, here are the resources. What can be done to meet these needs?" the conflict would be easy to resolve." Marshall B. Rosenberg
"We can throw stones, complain about them, stumble on them, climb over them, or build with them." William Arthur Ward .
"Where you stumble, there your treasure lies." Joseph Campbell.
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." Albert Einstein
"Children do not need to be made to learn to be better, told what to do or shown how. If they are given access to enough of the world, they will see clearly enough what things are truly important to themselves and to others, and they will make for themselves a better path into that world than anyone else could make for them" John Holt, How Children Fail
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." Albert Einstein
"To live in the world of creation -- to get into it and stay in it -- to frequent it and haunt it....to think intently and fruitfully, to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation -- this is the only thing." Henry James
"Now, that work which is of most importance to society is the bringing-up and instruction of the children - in the school, certainly, but far more in the home, because it is more than anything else the home influences brought to bear upon the child that determine the character and career of the future man or woman. It is a great thing to be a parent : there is no promotion, no dignity, to compare with it. The parents of but one child may be cherishing what shall prove a blessing to the world. But then, entrusted with such a charge, they are not free to say 'I may do as I will with mine own.' The children are, in truth, to be regarded less as personal property than as public trusts, put into the hands of parents that they may make the very most of them for the good of society. And, this responsibility is not equally divided between the parents : it is upon the mothers of the present that the future of the world depends, in even a greater degree than upon the fathers, because it is the mothers who have the sole direction of the child's early, most impressionable years. This is why we hear so frequently of great men who had good mothers - that is, mothers who brought up their children themselves, and did not make over their gravest duty to indifferent persons." Charlotte Mason, 1893, "Home Education" , pages 1 & 2.
"Children are not our own art products to be turned out well, but their own life work in continual process." Jan Fortune Wood
"As a homeschooling parent, I have often wondered who learns more in our family, the parent or the child. The topic I seem to be learning the most about is the nature of learning itself." Jan Hunt
"When we believe in our child fully, we trust that they are doing the very best they can at every moment, given their age, past experience and present circumstances. It is this kind of trust that I mean when I talk about parenting being on their child's side. Having someone dependably 'on their side' is absolutely critical if a child is to grow into adulthood with a generous capacity for love and trust. If we aren't on their side, who will be?" Jan Hunt
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." Marcus Tullius Cicero
"What I eventually discovered is that all selfish decisions - that is those meant to serve the true self, the human self lying hidden by thousands of years of culture, the human animal self that instinctively knows how to survive and is very resilient - build self esteem. A strong self esteem in individuals fosters compassionate and cooperative relationships which in turn builds strong communities. The task for me was to uncover the false premises and discover what the self really needed to thrive. Guided by this truth it's really only common sense to derive what folks like Holt and Kohn work hard to prove to those blinded by millenia of brainwashing! AKA "culture".... We humans work so darn hard to delude ourselves!!" Beverley Paine
"Unschooling and natural learning unfold from the centre - our centres. Our kids' centres. Our families' centres. The question we need to ask each day is what is central to our needs, as individuals within a family, within a community, within a society, within the family of humanity. Keep it honest and frank and confronting and we will naturally (and almost magically!) meet our needs in a timely and satisfactory manner." Beverley Paine
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change things, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." Buckminster Fuller.
"Success is not measured by what a person accomplishes, but by the opposition they have encountered, and by the courage with which they have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds" Charles Lindberg
"Today is God's gift to me; what I choose to do with it is my gift to God." St Augustine
"We are continually faced with great opportunities which are brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems." Margaret Mead
" Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials." Lin Yutang
"Parents must learn that their child is perfect and give them sensational respect." - Natasja de Jong , age 4
"What we learn with pleasure we never forget. " - Alfred Mercier
"Misbehavior is an adult description of what is more accurately perfect behavior given the conditions of the child's existence. " - Joseph Zornado
"Giving it your best shot is probably what it's all about." Peter Brock
"Two questions help us see why we are unlikely to get what we want by using punishment... The first question is: What do I want this person to do that's different from what he or she is currently doing? If we ask only this first question, punishment may seem effective because the threat or exercise of punitive force may well influence the person's behavior. However, with the second question, it becomes evident that punishment isn't likely to work: What do I want this person's reasons to be for doing what I'm asking?"
- Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D. Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Compassion
"Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you. " - William Arthur Ward
"Raising children with an emphasis on intrinsic rewards is not a technique, a method or a trick to get them to do what the parent wants them to by subtler means, but a way of life, a way of living with children with real respect for their intelligence and for their being. " - Mary Van Doren
"When people ask me what to do, I tell them to just give the child all the love that they can. Don't worry so much about anything else. And when it comes to discipline: never, never physically assault the child in any way, and certainly don't assault them with words, which can be just as cruel as physical punishment. " - Ashley Montagu, Touch the Future
"I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. " - Albert Einstein
"Peace in society depends upon peace in the family. " - Augustine
"If you had always been free to learn, you would follow your natural tendency to find out as fully as possible about the things that interest you, cars or stars. We are born with what they call "love of learning". Grace Llewellyn
"Teach your children to listen carefully and to speak thoughtfully. The best way to teach this is to listen carefully and speak thoughtfully to your children, from the time they are babies. Take their questions and ideas seriously... learning to speak and listen as if our words matter is fundamental to education. Dialogue is not the same as mindless chatter. Above all, listen, listen, and listen to your kids." Grace Llewellyn
"In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: forget about it. Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it. One day, you will glance up at your collection of Japanese literature, or trip over the solar oven you built, and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself." Grace Llewellyn
"I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them." Pablo Picasso
"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." William Arthur Ward
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein
"If I were asked to enumerate ten educational stupidities, the giving of grades would head the list... If I can't give a child a better reason for studying than a grade on a report card, I ought to lock my desk and go home and stay there." Dorothy De Zouche
"How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it." Alexandre Dumas
"When information doubles, knowledge halves, & wisdom quarters!" Robert Theobald
"In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." Eric Hoffer
"Life-long learners start their education at home." Beverley Paine
"American high schools are obsolete," he told the governors. "By obsolete.... I mean that our high schools - even when they are working exactly as designed, cannot teach our kids what they need to know today. Training the work force of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today's computers on a 50-year-old mainframe." Bill Gates
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us." Nelson Mandela, South African President 1994 Inaugural speech
" One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty, until you try. " Sophocles
"If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering. - Mahatma Gandhi
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. " Francis Bacon
"Delight and liberty, the simple creed of childhood." William Wordsworth
"Children should have the joy of living in far lands, in other persons, in other times - a delightful double existence; and this joy they will find, for the most part, in their story books. Their lessons, too, history and geography, should cultivate their conceptive powers. If the children do not live in the times of his history lesson, be not at home in the climate his geography book describes, why, these lessons will fail of their purpose." Charlotte Mason
"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us." Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
" You don't understand the material until you can do the problems at the end of the chapter. " Harry M. Kriz
" Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. " Winston Churchill
" When there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. " John Milton
" I f a little knowldge is dangerous, where is a man who has so much as to be out of danger? " Thomas Henry Huxley
" A little learning is not a dangerous thing to one who does not mistake it for a great deal. " William Allen White
" A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad. " Bob Edwards
" The education of a man is never completed until he dies. " Robert E. Lee
" Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. " Henry Ford
" We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities have been decayed and demolished? " Francis Bacon
" When house and land are gone and spent; then learning is most excellent. " Samuel Foote
"Children must master the language of things before they master the language of words." Friedrich Froebel , Pedagogics of the Kindergarten, 1895
"A great man is he who has not lost the heart of a child." Mencius {372-289 B.C. Chinese Philosopher}
"Homeschooling is where you don't have to go to school, with a teacher that you might not know, it's when you get to do your work at home and your mum is your teacher. You never have to change teachers because your mum is your teacher forever." Julia, age 7
"I do not think the young, or anyone else, will find their identity by hunting for it. Certainly not if they do all their hunting inside their skins, or heads. What makes me, and not somebody else, is my mental model, the world as I know it, the sum of my experiences and of my feelings about them. We find our identity by choosing, by trying out, by finding out through experience what we like and what we can do. Not only do we discover our identity, find out who we are, by choosing, we also make our identity, for each new choice adds something to our experience and hence to our world and to ourselves. ... We expand ourselves as we expand our world." John Holt
"The kind of motivation we want for our young life learners is already around them. Our children, whether they're hiding behind a game controller, buried in a fantasy novel, or focused on bugs in a jar, are learning about the drive and ambition of the adults in their lives. This aspect of their education arises, simply and inescapably, out of being based at home and in the real world. Bottom line: we don't need to worry about pushing our kids; we just need to let them see that we push ourselves." Jeanne Yardley
"A child's sense of autonomy can easily be disturbed by parental expectations. Avoid turning your child's curiosity into her destiny... A sensitive child may be driven away from her true passion when she senses that you are invested in her choice. If she wants more knowledge, she will ask for it. Once she does get into a lasting passion, you can trust her direction and support her vision, careful not to make her passion yours." Naomi Aldort
"To better understand the children explore the world, observe yourself." Naomi Aldort
"Natural learning builds on curiosity, stimulating children to actively explore their world. Parents become managers and mentors helping their children learn from everyday experiences and finding people and resources in the community that will provide answers and take them that further step..." John Peacock
"To look into some aspects of the future, we do not need projections by supercomputers. Much of the next millennium can be seen in how we care for our children today. Tomorrow's world may be influenced by science and technology, but more than anything, it is already taking shape in the bodies and minds of our children. " Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." Albert Einstein
"Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college." Lillian Smith
"A child whose life is full of the threat and fear of punishment is locked into babyhood. There is no way for him to grow up, to learn to take responsibility for his life and acts. Most important of all, we should not assume that having to yield to the threat of our superior force is good for the child's character. It is never good for anyone's character. " John Holt, Three Kinds of Discipline
"My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school." Margaret Mead
"Thank gooodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed >off some of the originality." Beatrix potter
"Education is not a preparation for life; Education is life itself." John Dewey
"What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup." Boris Pasternak
"The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn." Cicero
"If our earth is to survive, we need to take responsibility for what we do. Taking control of our own education is the first step." Heidi Preisnitz
"You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him to find it within himself." Galileo
"All I am saying in this book can be summed up in two words: Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted." John Holt
"I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was always at the foot of the class." Thomas Edison
"My job is not to teach at all, but to find the opportunities for my kids to learn. NOT knowing something can be an advantage, as it reminds me of the wealth of resources out there in the community and world, if only we are willing to go look for them." David Albert
"What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn't a school at all." John Holt
"In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: forget about it. Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it. One day, you will glance up at your collection of Japanese literature, or trip over the solar oven you built, and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself." Grace Llewellyn
"As we grow up, we have an ability to let go of immediate needs for the sake of long term goals. Children don't have such vision. Children live here and now. They need to feel that they have power, that they are important, that they can choose, and that the environment and people around them care about them and respond to them." Naomi Aldort
"Every person is a rich source of information which can and should be communicated, but the learning must always be at both ends." Cathy King
"The essence of teaching is working yourself out of a job, getting a person to the point where they don't need you." John Holt
"Ask a question and you're a fool for a minute. Don't ask and you're a fool for a lifetime." Meggan, age 10
"Learning is the responsibility of the learner; only the learner can choose to be attentive and actively process new learnings - the what, how, when and why to learn." Beverley Paine
"We all need time out, pause for reflection. Children especially, need the freedom that comes from being able to experience each stage of development fully at the appropriate time. Difficult as it may be, we need to build walls around their leisure time so that they can think their own thoughts, create their own things and learn to live the with responsibilities and birth right of freedom." John Peacock.
"The place to start is with something that really interests you, and then make yourself available to help others get to really do it also." John Holt
"Nothing is ... exciting. Nothing is ... worth embracing. Nothing is... wonderful. Nothing does matter in education. Nothing matters... a lot." Ann Clontz
"... the real goal of education should reflect the original meaning of the word, (ex ducere) to lead out of, not into, narrow limits of thought and specialized occupations, not to speak of rigid social and cultural biases." Cathy King
"What children need is not new and better curricula but access to more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to go), and to find out what they want to find out." John Holt
"It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty." Albert Einstein
"Learning is as natural as breathing." John Holt
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." Mark Twain
"The wish to preserve the past rather than the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young." Bertrand Russel
"My kids only come around once in my lifetime, and they (hopefully) won't be with me forever. I chose to have them, and I choose, freely, to make them and my family a priority in my life. This stage of life won't last forever. While it does, I've climbed on for the ride." David Albert
"We destroy the love of learning in children, which is so strong when they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty rewards--gold stars, or papers marked 100 and tacked to the wall, or A's on report cards, or honor rolls, or dean's lists or Phi Beta Kappa keys--in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that they are better than someone else." John Holt
"How could youth better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?" Henry David Thoreau
"I guess my ideal educational system would be a society in which knowledge was widely free and widely and freely shared, and children were everywhere trusted, respected, safe, valued, and welcomed." John Holt
"There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school." George Bernard Shaw
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but lighting of a fire." William Butler Yeats
"Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep." Albert Camus
"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is." Isaac Asimoc
"It is the duty of a citizen in a free country not to fit into society, but to make society." John Holt
"A free man cannot long be an ignorant man" William McKinley
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
"Every one and every thing around you is your teacher." Ken Keyes Jr.,
"What we are today comes from thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind." Buddha
"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element ... It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather ... I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether the crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized." Haim Ginott
"When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That's if you want to teach them to think." Bertrand Russell
"Kindness in thought leads to wisdom. Kindness in speech leads to eloquence. Kindness in action leads to love." Lao-Tsu c. 604 - c. 531 BC
"Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another." Juvenal (65-128 A.D.)
"If we hope to create a non-violent world where respect and kindness replace fear and hatred, we must begin with how we treat each other at the beginning of life. For that is where our deepest patterns are set. From these roots grow fear and alienation - or love and trust." Suzanne Arms
"No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure." Emma Goldman
"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in." Rachel Carson
"It is my pleasure that my children are free and happy, and unrestrained by parental tyranny. Love is the chain whereby to bind a child to its parents." Abraham Lincoln
"One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. One of the first things our schools do is destroy that distinction." John Taylor Gatto
"If you think in seasons, plant cereals. If you think in decades, plant trees. If you think in centuries, educate your children." Chinese Proverb
"The purpose of the learning task isn't always immediately obvious, either to the learner or observer. Each learning activity can have several layers of learning occuring at once. Children learn not only through language and participation but also by the non-verbal communication, timing, and sensory actions in each situation." Beverley Paine
"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." Mother Theresa
"The philosopher wants to empower us while the expert wants to stand over us and make us dependent on him." John Holt
"...nature's prime agenda in childhood is to develop imagination - ability to create images not present to he sensory system, and this takes place through storytelling and imaginative play." Joseph Chilton Peirce
"During the elementary years, it is the educator's task to to transform all that the child needs to know about the world into the language of the imagination; encouraging wonder, curiosity, reverence, and a love of learning."" Scott Dorwort and PJ Long
"What we learn with pleasure we never forget." Alfred Mercier
"As we grow up, we have an ability to let go of immediate needs for the sake of long term goals. Children don't have such vision. Children live here and now. They need to feel that they have power, that they are important, that they can choose, and that the environment and people around them care about them and respond to them." Naomi Aldort
"Most of what I knew, I had not learned in school, or in any other such school-like 'learning environments' or 'learning experiences' as meetings, workshops, and seminars. I suspected this was true of most people." John Holt
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or faraway." Henry David Thoreau
"It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers." James Thurber
"Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die." John Taylor Gatto
"They say that we are better educated than our parents' generation. What they mean is that we go to school longer. They are not the same thing." Douglas Yates
"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education." Bertrand Russell
"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches." George Bernard Shaw
"I'm sure the reason such young nitwits are produced in our schools is because they have no contact with anything of any use in everyday life." Petronius (d. circa 66 CE) The Satyricon.
"The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done." Jean Piaget
"He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on." Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
"He is to be educated because he is a man, and not because he is to make shoes, nails, and pins." William Ellery Channing (1780-1842)
"Education is too important to be left solely to educators." Francis Keppel
"Only the curious will learn and only the resolute will overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient." Edmund S. Wilson (1895-1972)
"It is easy to give a quick nod to lifelong learning, more difficult to consider what it really means, for the idea that people should study for about 12 years and then start living is more deeply seated in our culture than many people realize. Lifelong learning is more than an occasional adult education course. It is the expectation that someone will know more at age 40 than she did at age 30, the realization that it is never too late to begin learning another language, the belief that there are important new insights just over the horizon, no matter how old you are. But it is easy to forget these things, and a great deal of pressure on a homeschooler results from the perhaps unintentional assumption that everything a child will need to know during his life must be mastered in his first 18 years." Larry and Susan Kaseman
"Peace in society depends upon peace in the family." Augustine
"I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn." Albert Einstein
"The most potent force for change... is the growing recognition of millions of adults that their own impoverished expectations and frustrations came, in large measure, from their schooling." Marilyn Ferguson
"I think my deepest criticism of the educational system at that period [junior high and high school], and that also applies to other periods, is that it's all based upon a distrust of the student. Don't trust him to follow his own leads; guide him; tell him what to do; tell him what he should think; tell him what he should learn. Consequently at the very age when he should be developing adult characteristics of choice and decision making, when he should be trusted on some of those things, trusted to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes, he is, instead, regimented and shoved into a curriculum, whether it fits him or not." Carl Rogers
"Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold." Joseph Chilton Pearce
"If we are to attain real peace in this world, we will have to begin with the children." Gandhi
"Children are given to us - on loan - for a very short period of time. They come to us like flower seeds, with no pictures on the cover, and no guarantees. We don't know what they will look like, be like, act like, or have the potential to become." Katherine Kersey
"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is." Isaac Asimov
"Raising children with an emphasis on intrinsic rewards is not a technique, a method or a trick to get them to do what the parent wants them to by subtler means, but a way of life, a way of living with children with real respect for their intelligence and for their being." Mary Van Doren
"When people ask me what to do, I tell them to just give the child all the love that they can. Don't worry so much about anything else. And when it comes to discipline: never, never physically assault the child in any way, and certainly don't assault them with words, which can be just as cruel as physical punishment." Ashley Montagu
"Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you." William Arthur Ward
"That energy which makes a child hard to manage is the energy which afterwards makes him a manager of life." Henry Ward Beecher
"Where there is love, there is no imposition." Albert Einstein
"Two questions help us see why we are unlikely to get what we want by using punishment... The first question is: What do I want this person to do that's different from what he or she is currently doing? If we ask only this first question, punishment may seem effective because the threat or exercise of punitive force may well influence the person's behavior. However, with the second question, it becomes evident that punishment isn't likely to work: What do I want this person's reasons to be for doing what I'm asking?" Marshall Rosenberg
"The evolution of culture is ultimately determined by the amount of love, understanding and freedom experienced by its children... Every abandonment, every betrayal, every hateful act towards children returns tenfold a few decades later upon the historical stage, while every empathic act that helps a child become what he or she wants to become, every expression of love toward children heals society and moves it in unexpected, wondrous new directions." Lloyd deMause
"One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child." Randall Jarrell
"Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out." Oscar Wilde
"The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart." Mencius (371?-289 BC)
"How often do parents discover, sometimes with mortification, that under stress they begin to sound just like their own mother or father? ... When we are perplexed, or confronted, by challenging parenting situations, it can be fruitful to ask ourselves: 'what was happening to me at the age that my child is now? By re-activating our childhood feelings and memories, children help us to highlight that which wants healing inside each of us; and thus they furnish us with countless opportunities for personal growth. Our children make us better parents, but also better people, and in that regard they give us as much as we give them. Without knowing it, they help to shape our emotional intelligence as we contribute to theirs." Robin Grill
"Why are children the last ones to be protected against the potential evils of power and authority? Is it that they are smaller, or that adults find it so much easier to rationalize the use of power with such notions as 'Father knows best' or 'It's for their own good'? My own conviction is that as more people begin to understand power and authority more completely and accept its use as unethical, more parents will apply those understandings to adult-child relationships; will begin to feel that it is just as immoral in those relationships; and then will be forced to search for creative new nonpower methods that all adults can use with children and youth." Thomas Gordon
"Society chooses to disregard the mistreatment of children, judging it to be altogether normal because it is so commonplace." Alice Miller
"Nothing is more important in the world today than the nurturing that children receive in the first three years of life, for it is in these earliest years that the capacities for trust, empathy, and affection originate." Dr. Elliott Barker
"Any child who can spend an hour or two a day, or more if he wants, with adults that he likes, who are interested in the world and like to talk about it, will on most days learn far more from their talk than he would learn in a week of school." John Holt
"Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization. I know. I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities." Seymour Papert
"Never leave a baby alone to cry. This is an absolute rule. He may be crying because he is hungry, cold, too hot, wet, etc; if so, these things may be attended to. But he may be none of these things; he may be crying because he is frightened, and if not reassured early this is a dangerous condition. If an infant in the early weeks and months of life is allowed to remain frightened and alone, his first impression of the world into which he has come is that it is inhospitable, dangerous and lonely, and there is no use seeking help. He must try to fend for himself and not expect help; but he cannot fend for himself; he is helpless. It is not a matter for surprise that such impressions may color his view of the world and the people in it permanently. Much of his subsequent conduct will be devoted to the object of making himself as secure as he can in an insecure world." M. Bevan-Brown, M.D.
"Coercion or compulsion never brings about growth. It is freedom that accelerates evolution." Paramahansa Yogananda
"If you live in a material universe where acquiring things is very important to you, then family is an absolute deterrent to maintaining that sort of a world, because family involves values like affection, and sympathy, and passion, and types of pleasure that lead nowhere in a material sense." John Taylor Gatto
"Grown men can learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss." Black Elk
"People would be busy doing interesting things that mattered. Doing them, they would grow more informed, competent, and wise. They would learn about the world from living in it, working in it, and changing it, and from knowing a wide variety of people who were doing the same." John Holt
"We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift - our personal association, which means so much to them - we give grudgingly." Mark Twain
"A society is best judged by how it treats its children." Unknown
"What distinguishes a human being from a computer? The ability to add up numbers? The ability to understand language? The ability to be logical? It is, of course, none of the above. It is the ability to play. Computers cannot have fun. They cannot fantasize. They cannot dream, they cannot experience emotion or summon intuition. These rare, precious qualities come naturally to every child on this earth yet they tend to be seen, by well meaning adults, as faults, foibles and failings. In pushing tiny toddlers to 'perform', we rob them of the ability to imagine." Jonathan Cainer
"For success in training children the first condition is to become as a child oneself, but this means no assumed childishness, no condescending baby-talk that the child immediately sees through and deeply abhors. What it does mean is to be as entirely and simply taken up with the child as the child himself is absorbed by his life." Ellen Key
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein
"All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
"When we are polite to children, we show in the most simple and direct way possible that we value them as people and care about their feelings." Dr. David Elkind
"Learning has to be related to some real and authentic purpose, or need, desire, and needs to be determined by the learner! Often, if children can see the importance of learning something in relation to their selves, they are keen and co-operative learners. Children also have an evolving sense of time - futuristic goals are almost always those of their parents or others!" Beverley Paine
"You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself." Galileo Gallilei
"Kids who have their needs met early by loving parents ... are subjected totally and thoroughly to the most severe form of 'discipline' conceivable: they don't do what you don't want them to do because they love you so much! "If you haven't cluttered the airwaves between you and your child with a thousand stupid 'don'ts' over your Royal Doulton china, or not eating their dessert before the main course, or not finishing their spinach, or not doing this or that, then those few situations where it really matters because of safety and impropriety don't need anything approaching the connotation of 'discipline' to ensure appropriate behavior." Dr. Elliott Barker
"It's so sad how abusive our world has become. I think the majority of people in this world have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, what happiness is possible when there is love." Duen Hsi Yen
"Forced association is not socialisation." Adele Carroll
"Except in rare times of great stress or danger, there is no reason why we cannot say 'No' to children in just as kind a way as we say 'Yes'. Both are words. Both convey ideas which even tiny children are smart enough to grasp. One says, 'We don't do it that way', the other says 'That's the way we do it'. Most of the time, that is what children want to find out. Except when overcome by fatigue, curiosity, or excitement, they want to do it right, do as we do, fit in, take part." John Holt
"Five is a wonderful time of life for a little kid... It is a time when the eyes are wide open and the patterns are not yet set; a time when one has not yet been hammered into accepting everything as immutable and hopeless; a time when the hands cannot do enough, the mind cannot learn enough, the world is infinite and colorful and filled with mysteries. Five is a special time before they take the questing, unquenchable, quixotic soul of the young dreamer and thrust it into dreary schoolroom boxes. A time before they take the trembling hands that want to hold everything, touch everything, figure everything out, and make them lie still on desktops. A time before people begin saying 'act your age' and 'grow up' or 'you're behaving like a baby'. It is a time of delight, of wonder, of innocence." Harlan Ellison
"Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow." Thomas Bray
"The first real choice a human baby must make is whether to trust or mistrust other humans. This basic trust-versus-mistrust stage is the first building block upon which all later love relationships are formed." Dr. Ken Magid
"There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children." Marianne Williamson
"We have a cultural notion that if children were not engineered, if we did not manipulate them, they would grow up as beasts in the field. This is the wildest fallacy in the world." Joseph Chilton Pearce
"Childhood is that state which ends the moment a puddle is first viewed as an obstacle instead of an opportunity." Kathy Williams
"By condoning punishment as a disciplinary tool, we perpetuate the acceptability of the use of force and power to control others. At the same time we perpetuate our ignorance and our fear. We use punishment in order to stop behavior rather than having the courage to confront and understand it. By openly dealing with the underlying causes of the child's behavior, both parent and child have the opportunity to get a better and more realistic view of the child's actions, and any potential danger to the child and/or to the parent. We evolved to protect children from harm, not to harm them." James Kimmel
"Every human being, as he grows into childhood, must inevitably be hampered and opposed by the restrictions of his environment, and the best we can hope for is to modify somewhat the urgency of this conflict. The degree to which we are considerate of our baby's early needs, however, may be the measure of his later ability to feel secure in a world of change and to adapt himself to the necessities of circumstance." C. Anderson Aldrich, M.D.
"Learning is not a product of teaching . kids are born learning. They learn how to walk, how to talk. They're basically little scientists. If we don't stop that process, it will continue." Grace Llewellyn June
"As we grow up, we have an ability to let go of immediate needs for the sake of long term goals. Children don't have such vision. Children live here and now. They need to feel that they have power, that they are important, that they can choose, and that the environment and people around them care about them and respond to them." Naomi Aldort
"Love is patient, love is kind." 1 Corinthians 13:4
"A baby's cry is precisely as serious as it sounds." Jean Liedloff
"In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: forget about it. Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it. One day, you will glance up at your collection of Japanese literature, or trip over the solar oven you built, and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself." Grace Llewellyn
"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." Mother Theresa
"Each of us must come to care about everyone else's children. We must recognize that the welfare of our children is intimately linked to the welfare of all other people's children. After all, when one of our children needs life-saving surgery, someone else's child will perform it. If one of our children is harmed by violence, someone else's child will be responsible for the violent act. The good life for our own children can be secured only if a good life is also secured for all other people's children." Lilian Katz
"The biggest disease this world suffers from is people feeling unloved." Lady Diana Frances Spencer, Princess of Wales
"...our survival as a human community may depend as much upon our nurture of love in infancy and childhood as upon the protection of our society from external threats." Selma Fraiberg
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence." Robert Frost
"When I was young, I was put in a school for retarded kids for two years before they realized I actually had a hearing loss and they called ME slow!" Kathy Buckley
"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission." Eleanor Roosevelt
"Every stage in a child's life is there for a purpose. If we can respect and respond to her needs fully during each stage of her life, she can be done with that stage and move on." Naomi Aldort
"We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people." Alice Miller
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace." Jimi Hendrix
"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty." Albert Einstein
"The best way to make children good is to make them happy." Oscar Wilde
"Every one and every thing around you is your teacher." Ken Keyes Jr
"Our tightly controlled educational system mocks the promise of democracy. With a closed educational system we simply cannot have an open political system. The current situation allows the government and big business to manufacture and maintain our culture for us, and in turn, control remains in the hands of the experts and institutions. The ability to change this situation is in the hands of the individuals and families who understand why change is necessary." Helen Hegener
"Life is not a burden, but we make it one when we refuse to accept things as they are." Baba Hari Dass
"The first wealth is health." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"My body has certainly wandered a good deal, but I have an uneasy suspicion that my mind has not wandered enough." Noel Coward
"To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand." Jose Ortega Gasset
"Life is playfulness... We need to play so that we can rediscover the magic all around us." Flora Colao
"Within our dreams and aspirations we find our opportunities." Sue Atchley Ebaugh
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance." MC Richards
"Every child is an artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." Pablo Picasso
"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary." Pablo Picasso
"To live a creative life, me must lose our fear of being wrong." Josesph Chilton Pearce
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler." Henry David Thoreau
"Undoubtedly we become what we envisage." Charles M Bristol
"A painting is never finished - it simply stops in interesting places." Paul Gardner
"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." Albert Einstein
"Learning is movement from moment to moment." J Krishnamurti
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein
"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars." Les Brown
"I hate quotations." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Was this article helpful? Was it worth $1.00 to you?
Your gift of $1 or more helps to keep this site operating
offering encouragement
and reassurance to families
wanting
better outcomes for their children.
Beverley Paine with her children, and their home educated children, relaxing at home.
Together with the support of my family, my aim is to help parents educate their children in stress-free, nurturing environments. In addition to building and maintaing this website, I continue to create and manage local and national home educating networks, help to organise conferences and camps, as well as write for, edit and produce newsletters, resource directories and magazines. I am an active supporter of national, state, regional and local home education groups.
"You've been an inspiration to me, I love the way
you really listen to people." Vanessa
"Whenever I read your writing I always come away
with increased confidence in my ability to provide and
share a wonderful learning journey with my family!" Davina
"Your guidance, understanding, support and words of
wisdom changed our lives. We now offer support and
organise many homeschooling events for others." Lesley
"Thank you once again for your prompt and friendly service.
I am convinced that your books are going to add
quality and peace of mind to my journey of teaching my kids
at home! Just from studying your website, until almost
2am
in the morning, I 've been encouraged!" Louisa
"Thank you for all your many,many reassuring words
over many, many years. You probably don't know exactly how
valuable you are to the Australian Home Education community.
I've been reading your stuff for maybe 8 years or more now.
And I'm very grateful." Gythaa
CLICK HERE
if you want to learn
how to write your own education plans
to suit
your unique children's
individual learning needs?
Or you are looking for quality curriculum and teaching tips...
|
About
Thank you for visiting!