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PREVIOUS QUOTES OF THE WEEK

"In a happy mood ... you are actually better at solving intellectual and practical problems."

(Ian Robertson "Mind Sculpture")

"Factors like the novelty of the incoming information and the intensity of the emotions attached to it help determine how indelibly a memory is stored.

(Robert Winston  "The Human Mind")

"It's only my opinion but I think learning should be fun.  People seem to learn more easily, thoroughly and quickly when the subject is interesting and entertaining.  As human beings, we enjoy pleasurable experiences and seem to have a natural capacity to remember them."

(Ronald D Davis "The Gift of Dyslexia")

"To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education."

(John Ruskin)

"People learn in direct proportion to how much fun they are having."

(Bob Pike, Creative Training Techniques)

27 January 2007

"A window of opportunity doesn't open itself."

(Anonymous)

"Dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of."

(Benjamin Franklin)

"The increasing complexity of the world demands a matching ability to analyze situations logically and solve problems creatively."

(Colin Rose)

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

(Albert Einstein)

"Enthusiasm is easier than obedience"

(Michael Griffith)

"Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion."

(Ralph Sockman)

"The human brain is by no means fully formed at birth.  It continues to shape itself through life, with the most intense growth occurring during childhood."

(Daniel Goleman "Emotional Intelligence")

"The power of music, narrative and drama is of the greatest practical and theoretical importance. ... We see how the retarded, unable to perform fairly simple tasks involving perhaps four or five movements or procedures in sequence, can do these perfectly if they work to music."

(Oliver Sacks "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat")

"You don't fatten a pig by constantly weighing it."

(Unknown)

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Albert Einstein

"We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those."

Daniel Goleman

11 November 2006

"The old idea was that the schools cooked you until you were done, and then you went to work.  Now, you've got to be constantly cooking."

Sue E Berryman

"An answer is always on the stretch of road that is behind you.  Only a question can point the way forward."

Jostein Gaarder - Hello? Is anybody there?

"We do not think in a linear, sequential way, yet every body of information that is given to us is given to us in a linear manner ... we are taught to communicate in a way that is actually constricting our ability to think."

R. S. Wurman

"The human mind is not, as philosophers would have you think, a debating hall, but a picture gallery."

D. E. Harding

When the brain changes ... with your mood, it is not just how you feel that alters.  The whole functioning of your brain is changed.  In a happy mood, for instance, you are actually better at solving intellectual and practical problems.

Ian Robertson - Mind Sculpture

"It's praise that really makes you work."

Year 8 girl

"To build and strengthen new connections, the brain needs the challenge of fresh and unusual stimuli. .... There's a lot of evidence to suggest that repetition is bad for brain health, and novelty is good."

(Professor Robert Winston - The Human Mind and how to make the most of it)

"We have got to do a lot fewer things in school.  The greatest enemy of understanding is coverage.  As long as you are determined to cover everything, you actually ensure that most kids are not going to understand.  You've got to take enough time to get kids deeply involved in something so they can think about it in lots of different ways ..."

(Howard Gardner - Educational Leadership)

"We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

(Lee Iacocca - American Executive)

"Instead of a national curriculum for education, what is really needed is an individual curriculum for every child."

(Charles Handy - The Age of Unreason)

2 September 2006

"The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives."

(Robert Maynard Hutchins)

"Each moment we are in the classroom with our pupils we're creating the emotional environment.  The question is; are we creating an environment where each pupil feels safe enough to risk learning, or are we creating an environment that's causing our pupils to shut down or rebel?"

(P Sims, Awakening Brilliance)

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

(Albert Einstein)

"Plan ahead.  It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark."

(Richard Cushing)

"When you think you've found the answer, all too often you stop asking questions - and it's asking questions (not knowing answers) that is essential to learning."

Every time a sheep bleats, it misses a mouthful.

Anyone who thinks they "know all the answers" is asking the wrong questions.

Brains are pattern-making organs with an innate desire to create novel connections.

(David Rock & Jeffrey Schwarz - The Neuroscience of Leadership)

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

(James Joyce)

In our evolving world the ability to think is fast becoming more desirable than any fixed set of skills and knowledge.  We need problem solvers, decision makers and innovators.

(Mike Fleetham, How to create and develop a Thinking Classroom.)

What we learn with pleasure we never forget.

(Charles Alfred Mercier)

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.

(Benjamin Franklin)

When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is sparky.

(Roald Dahl, Danny the Champion of the World)

Memory is not like a container that gradually fills up, it is more like a tree growing hooks onto which memories are hung.  Everything you remember is another set of hooks on which more new memories can be attached.  So the capacity of memory keeps on growing.  The more you know, the more you can know.

(Peter Russell, The Brain Book)