Quips, Quotes, Adages, and Aphorisms on Homeschool, Public School, Life, and Learning
WE LEARN NOT FOR SCHOOL,
BUT FOR LIFE.
Some are serious and some are just plain silly, so enjoy them for what they are!
Quotable Contents
|| On Institutional Schooling || On Government Control ||
|| On Indoctrination || On Peer Pressure & Socialization ||
|| On Boredom & Amusement || On Joy of Learning ||
|| On Curiosity, Creativity, & Genius || On Nonsense ||
|| On Individuality & Self-Education || On Motivation ||
|| On Hard Work & Achievement || On Knowledge ||
|| On Critical Thinking || On Math & Science ||
|| On the Liberal Arts || On Wisdom ||
|| On Character & Ethics || On the Home Environment ||
|| On Living Life || On Hard Decisions ||
ON INSTITUTIONAL SCHOOLING
Great reasons to homeschool your children!
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.~ Lily Tomlin
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
~ Albert Einstein
As Paul Goodman has said, and it cannot be said too often, at the turn of the century, when only six percent of our young even finished high school, and half or less of one percent went to college, the whole country was run by dropouts. But now all roads lead through school. To fail there is to fail everywhere.
~ John Holt
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
~ Gandhi
Schooling confuses teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.
~ Wendy Priesnitz
I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was always at the foot of the class.
~ Thomas Edison
A professor is someone who talks in other people's sleep.~ Unknown
There is no idea so stupid that you can't find a professor who will
believe it.
~ H. L. Mencken
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.
~ Nicholas Butler
I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
~ Albert Einstein
In the first place God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
~ Mark Twain
Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
~ John Maynard Keyes
Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence.
~ Albert Edward Wiggam
By bells and many other similar techniques [schools] teach that nothing is worth finishing. The gross error of this is progressive: if nothing is worth finishing then by extension nothing is worth starting either. Few children are so thick-skulled they miss the point.
~ John Taylor Gatto
Retarded? Disturbed? Attention Deficit? When I read those weak excuses for the schools' failures, I have a definite Belief Deficit.
~ Donn Reed
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.~ Alexandre Dumas
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.
~ Anne Sullivan
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.
~ H. L. Mencken
When we make our laws and educational policies primarily for the parents who don't care, instead of for those who do, those laws are backwards. We urge that the burden of proof be on the state to show which mothers and fathers are not doing their job.
~ Dr. Raymond Moore
The greatest enemy of the excellent is the good.
~ American Proverb
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ON GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF EDUCATION
Great reasons to homeschool the revolution!
It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.~ Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda
A totalitarian state will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.
~ Adolf Hitler
The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.
~ Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
What luck for rulers that men do not think.
~ Adolf Hitler
The state will take youth and will give to youth its own education and its own upbringing. Your child already belongs to us... What are you?~ Adolf Hitler
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
~ Hannah Arendt
The battle for humankind's future must be won in the public schools by teachers who correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old & the new, the rotting corpse of Christianity with all its adjacent evils & misery, and the new faith.
~ John Dunphy, The Humanist magazine
Parents give up their rights when they drop the children off at public school.
~ Melinda Harmon, U.S. Federal Judge, 1996
A tax supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state. ~ Isabel Patterson, The God of the Machine
The end cannot justify the means for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.
~ Aldous Huxley
Trying to get more learning out of the present system is like trying to get the Pony Express to compete with the telegraph by breeding faster ponies.
~ Edward Fiske
If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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ON INDOCTRINATION
Schools are indoctrinating our children.
School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.~ Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society
The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.
~ H. L. Mencken
Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.
~ Richard Mitchell, The Underground Grammarian
You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself - educating your own judgment. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this society.
~ Doris Lessing
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HOMESCHOOL FAQ
Questions about homeschooling or unschooling? Ask them here!
If you have questions about homeschooling, don't miss this amazingly helpful resource page! All your questions answered, plus lots more answers to questions you haven't even thought of yet!
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Homeschool FAQ
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Do you have questions about whether you should homeschool, or how you can? You've come to the right place. Here is an extensive list of questions and answers, with links to some of the best resources on the web. I hope to expand this lens significan...
ON PEER PRESSURE & SOCIALIZATION
Do you really want your children socialized by kids even more immature than they?
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.~ Eric Hoffer
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
~ Adlai Stevenson
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
~ James Thurber
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
What we think about when we are free to think about what we will - that is what we are or will soon become.~ A.W. Tozer
The idea of learning acceptable social skills in a school is as absurd to me as learning nutrition from a grocery store.
~ Lisa Russell
Fashion is an induced epidemic.
~ George Bernard Shaw
Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers it deserves.
~ John Boynton Priestly
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think.
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
~ James Russell Lowe
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ON SOCIAL BENEFITS OF HOMESCHOOLING
"The Well-Adjusted Child" by Rachel Gathercole
The Well-Adjusted Child: The Social Benefits of Homeschooling
Drawing on her own experiences as a homeschooler, Gathercole details the networks of other homeschoolers who provide opportunities for their children-and themselves-to socialize. Gathercole also points to research showing that homeschooled children have stronger self-concepts than children attending conventional schools. Great encouragement for parents who are homeschooling and those who are considering it.
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 11/22/2009) 
ON BOREDOM & AMUSEMENT
Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.
~ Charles Dickens
Boredom . . . The desire for desires.
~ Leo Tolstoy
A man's real worth is determined by what he does when he has nothing to do.
~ Megiddo Message
Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true.
~ William Inge
Boredom is a sickness the cure for which is work; pleasure is only a palliative.
~ Le Duc de Lévis
All things considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
~ Charles-Pierre Baudelaire
~ Charles Dickens
Boredom . . . The desire for desires.
~ Leo Tolstoy
A man's real worth is determined by what he does when he has nothing to do.
~ Megiddo Message
Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true.
~ William Inge
Boredom is a sickness the cure for which is work; pleasure is only a palliative.
~ Le Duc de Lévis
All things considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
~ Charles-Pierre Baudelaire
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ON THE JOY OF LEARNING
Learning... should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life's greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the mind of noble and learned men, not a conducted tour through a jail.
~ Taylor Caldwell
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
~ John Lubbock
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child's natural bent.
~ Plato
~ Taylor Caldwell
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.~ John Lubbock
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child's natural bent.
~ Plato
Of all the joyous motives of school life, the love of knowledge is the only abiding one; the only one which determines the scale, so to speak, upon which the person will hereafter live.
~ Charlotte Mason
Our generation was not taught how to learn and was never given a love of learning. Yet our children are trained with the same methods that failed to teach us to learn or to love learning. With only the raw material of our fragmented lives to work with, we attempt to integrate our new vision, godly desires, and goals into our old lifestyles and systems. We use the world's methods to try and produce something they were never designed to produce.
~ Marilyn Howshall
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. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry.
~ Albert Einstein
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour germinates no more.
~ Henri Amiel
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ON CURIOSITY, CREATIVITY, & GENIUS
I have no particular talent, I am merely extremely inquisitive.~ Albert Einstein
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.
~ Jonathan Swift
When the pioneer in science sends forth the groping fingers of his thoughts, he must have a vivid, intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by an artistically creative imagination.
~ Max Planck
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
~ Albert Einstein
Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us.
~ John Taylor Gatto
I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
~ Albert Einstein
The principle 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
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.~ Albert Einstein
The truly educated person has only had many doors opened. He knows that life will not be long enough to follow everything through fully.
~ Susan Schaeffer Macauley
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.
~ Albert Einstein
The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion - these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness.
~ Jerome S. Bruner
When I examine myself and my method of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge.
~ Albert Einstein
Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun. ~ George Scialabba
Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.~ Roger Lewin
When freedom prevails, the ingenuity and inventiveness of people creates incredible wealth. This is the source of the natural improvement of the human condition.
~ Brian S. Wesbury
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ON NONSENSE
To be perpetually talking sense runs out the mind, as perpetually ploughing and taking crops runs out the land. The mind must be manured, and nonsense is very good for the purpose.~ James Boswell
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HOMESCHOOL T'S & GEAR
T-shirts & totes, hats & hoodies, mugs & magnets, & lots more homeschool gear!
Advertise your allegiance with humor, bite, or a revolutionary flair! For homeschoolers and unschoolers everywhere.
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Homeschool T's and Gear
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Say it loud, say it proud: we homeschool and you should too! Here is where you'll find what you need to let the world know what you do and why. From lighthearted to revolutionary, you'll find a design to express your homeschool spirit. T-shirts and t...
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'Homeschool the Revolution' T-shirts and Gifts
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. . Should the state be in charge of the children and the shape of the future, or should we stand on principle and shape our children ourselves? The revolutionaries will be homeschooled! WARNING: Not for faint-of-heart homeschoolers! T-shirts and to...
ON INDIVIDUALITY & SELF-EDUCATION
You will not reap the fruit of individuality in your children if you clone their education.~ Marilyn Howshall
Thank goodness my education was neglected.
~ Beatrix Potter
There isn't any known way to bulk-educate; it's all custom work.
~ John Taylor Gatto
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
~ Sir Walter Scott
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
~ Christopher Morley
The single most important contribution education can make to a child's development is to help him towards a field where his talents best suit him, where he will be satisfied and competent. We've completely lost sight of that. Instead we subject everyone to an education where, if you succeed, you will be best suited to be a college professor... And we evaluate everyone along the way according to whether they meet that narrow standard of success. We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to succeed and many, many different abilities that will help you get there.
~ Howard Gardner, Multiple Intelligences
Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.~ Charlotte Mason
An English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, 'What's your alma mater?' I told him, 'Books.'
~ Malcolm X, on his self-education in prison after an 8th grade public education
To teach a man how he may learn to grow independently, and for himself, is perhaps the greatest service that one man can do another.
~ Benjamin Jowett
There's no such thing as a stupid kid, but there are plenty of spurious educational tactics.
~ Richard Schiefelbusch
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ON MOTIVATION
What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge,
not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
~ George Bernard Shaw
It is hard not to feel that there must be something very wrong with much of what we do in school, if we feel the need to worry so much about what many people call 'motivation'. A child has no stronger desire than to make sense of the world, to move freely in it, to do the things that he sees bigger people doing.
~ John Holt
Nobody rises to low expectations.
~ Calvin Lloyd
The ultimate goal of the
educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.
~ John W. Gardner
Teaching does not make learning - organized education operates on the assumption that children learn only when and only what and only because we teach them. This is not true. It is very close to 100% false. Learners make learning.
~ John Holt
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught.
~ Oscar Wilde
Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.
~ Abbé Dimnet
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
~ Mark Twain
I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.
~ Agatha Christie
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.
~ Walter Bagehot
He is educated who knows how to find out what he doesn't know.
~ George Simmel
An orchestra requires men with different talents and, within limits, different tastes; if all men insisted upon playing the trombone, orchestral music would be impossible. Social co-operation, in like manner, requires differences of taste and aptitude, which are less likely to exist if all children are exposed to the same influences than if parental differences are allowed to affect them.
~ Bertrand Russell
Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.
~ Ezra Pound
Education
is not
the filling
of a pail,
but the lighting
of a fire.
~ William Butler Yeats
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not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
~ George Bernard Shaw
It is hard not to feel that there must be something very wrong with much of what we do in school, if we feel the need to worry so much about what many people call 'motivation'. A child has no stronger desire than to make sense of the world, to move freely in it, to do the things that he sees bigger people doing.
~ John Holt
Nobody rises to low expectations.
~ Calvin Lloyd
The ultimate goal of the
educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.
~ John W. Gardner
Teaching does not make learning - organized education operates on the assumption that children learn only when and only what and only because we teach them. This is not true. It is very close to 100% false. Learners make learning.
~ John Holt
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught.
~ Oscar Wilde
Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.~ Abbé Dimnet
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
~ Mark Twain
I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.
~ Agatha Christie
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.
~ Walter Bagehot
He is educated who knows how to find out what he doesn't know.
~ George Simmel
An orchestra requires men with different talents and, within limits, different tastes; if all men insisted upon playing the trombone, orchestral music would be impossible. Social co-operation, in like manner, requires differences of taste and aptitude, which are less likely to exist if all children are exposed to the same influences than if parental differences are allowed to affect them.
~ Bertrand Russell
Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.
~ Ezra Pound
Educationis not
the filling
of a pail,
but the lighting
of a fire.
~ William Butler Yeats
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ON HARD WORK & ACHIEVEMENT
Nothing is stronger than habit.~ Ovid
If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
~ Thomas Edison
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
~ Theodore Roosevelt
The more we do, the more we can do.
~ William Hazlitt
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. 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
The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.~ Chinese Proverb
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
~ Thomas Edison, on his failure to achieve a working lightbulb
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent!
~ President Calvin Coolidge
Education is hanging around until you have caught on.~ Robert Frost
The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
~ John Ruskin
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
~ Aristotle
The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
~ President Theodore Roosevelt
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
~ Samuel Johnson
Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.~ Lance Armstrong
Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
~ Sir James Barrie
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ON KNOWLEDGE
The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
~ Laurence Sterne
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
~ Anatole France
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
~ Bertrand Russell
The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
~ Elbert Green Hubbard
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
~ Daniel J. Boorstin
We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.
~ John Naisbett
The more I read, the more I meditate; and the more I acquire, the more certain I am that
I know nothing.
~ Voltaire
When Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to the uneducated, he replied, "As much as the living are to the dead."
~ Dionysius of Halicarnassus
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
~ President Thomas Jefferson
The question is not, - how much does the youth know when he has finished his education - but how much does he care and about how many orders of things does he care?
~ Charlotte Mason
No education seems to be worth the name which has not made children at home in the world of books, and so related to them, mind to mind, with thinkers who have dealt with knowledge.
~ Charlotte Mason
~ Laurence Sterne
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
~ Anatole France
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
~ Bertrand Russell
The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
~ Elbert Green Hubbard
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
~ Daniel J. Boorstin
We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.
~ John Naisbett
The more I read, the more I meditate; and the more I acquire, the more certain I am that
I know nothing.
~ Voltaire
When Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to the uneducated, he replied, "As much as the living are to the dead."
~ Dionysius of Halicarnassus
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
~ President Thomas Jefferson
The question is not, - how much does the youth know when he has finished his education - but how much does he care and about how many orders of things does he care?
~ Charlotte Mason
No education seems to be worth the name which has not made children at home in the world of books, and so related to them, mind to mind, with thinkers who have dealt with knowledge.
~ Charlotte Mason
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ON CRITICAL THINKING
No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking.
~ Voltaire
Learning how to learn is life's most important skill.
~ Tony Buzan
For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.
~ Dorothy Sayers
Chance favors the trained mind.~ Louis Pasteur
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
A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink of it deeply, or taste it not, for shallow thoughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking deeply sobers us again.
~ Alexander Pope
The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.
~ James Beattie
Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.
~ Robert Lindner
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
~ Joseph Joubert
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
~ G.K. Chesterton
I'm sure the reason such young nitwits are produced in our schools is because they have
no contact with anything of use in everyday life.
~ Petronius (a.d. 66)
Is it not the great defect of our education today that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils "subjects," we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think? They learn everything, except the art of learning.
~ Dorothy Sayers
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ON MATH & SCIENCE
Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.
~ Fran Lebowitz
Nature-study cultivates the child's imagination, since there are so many wonderful and true stories that he may read with his own eyes, which affect his imagination as much as does fairy lore; at the same time nature-study cultivates in him a perception and a regard for what is true, and the power to express it. All things seem possible in nature; yet this seeming is always guarded by the eager quest of what is true. Perhaps half the falsehood in the world is due to lack of power to detect truth and to express it. Nature-study aids both in discernment and in expression of things as they are.
~ Anna Botsford Comstock
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
A small apparatus well used will do wonders ... Newton rolled up a cover of a book; he put a small glass at one end, and a large brain at the other - it was enough.
~ Maria Mitchell, discoverer of Mitchell's comet
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ON THE LIBERAL ARTS
Reading, Writing, Art, Music
The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.
~ Igor Stravinsky
A faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel.
~ Ovid
What is desperately needed . . . is the skepticism and the sense of history that a liberal arts education provides.
~ Felix Rohatyn
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain a perennial child.
~ Cicero
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The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
~ Mark Twain
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds.
~ William Ellery Channing
Nowadays the illiterates can read and write.
~ Alberto Moravia
The Universal Law of Reading
First corollary: To read effectively, always sit in a canoe and wear a face mask, snorkel, and flippers.
Second corollary: Don't believe everything you read.
~ Dave Ellis
Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
~G. M. Trevelyan
It is the mark of a truly educated man to know what not to read.
~ Ezra Taft Benson
He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
~ William Godwin
You know, when we are kids we make things up, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some are still writing; the real question is why did the other people stop?~ William Stafford
You can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count.
~ Winnie the Pooh
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
~ Erasmus
~ Click on any picture to see that item for purchase. ~
LITERATURE-BASED HOMESCHOOLING
How to use literature in your homeschool curriculum!
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'Five in a Row' Literature-Based Unit Studies: Easy, Inexpensive, Fun!
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As an educator, mother, and homeschooler, I have a rave review for all you new (and seasoned) homeschoolers out there. Five in a Row is the best, easiest, most fun, and cheapest homeschool curriculum, guaranteed to prevent teacher/student burnout! I...
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How to Get Your Child to Love Reading: Exploring Everything in the World Through Books
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The subtitle says it all! "For ravenous and reluctant readers alike: Activities, ideas, and inspiration for exploring everything in the world through books." With over 3,000 hand-picked titles and descriptions, as well as craft and storytime ideas an...
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Learn Shapes, Numbers, Colors, and More From Little Rabbit and Friends
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Alan Baker's "Little Rabbit" series of books are some of my daughter's absolute favorites, and they are books I don't get tired of reading to her. The illustrations are beautiful and the simple, sweet stories are utterly charming. It's hard to find a...
ON WISDOM
Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
He who knows others is learned; he who knows himself is wise.
~ Lao-Tzu
Cleverness is not wisdom.
~ Euripedes
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
~ James Thurber
Examine what is said, not him who speaks.
~ Arabian Proverb
Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.
~ David Starr Jordan
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ON CHARACTER & ETHICS
To educate a man in mind, and not in morals, is to educate a menace to society.
~ President Theodore Roosevelt
Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to furnish it.
~ President William Howard Taft
Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.
~ John Ruskin
We can get too easily bogged down in the academic part of homeschooling, a relatively minor part of the whole, which is to raise competent, caring, literate, happy people.
~ Diane Flynn Keith
The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man which it forms. If it injures the intelligence, it is bad; if it injures the character, it is vicious; if it injures the conscience, it is criminal.
~ Amiel
An eternal question about children is, how should we educate them? Politicians and educators consider more school days in a year, more science and math, the use of computers and other technology in the classroom, more exams and tests, more certification for teachers, and less money for art. All of these responses come from the place where we want to make the child into the best adult possible, not in the ancient Greek sense of virtuous and wise, but in the sense of one who is an efficient part of the machinery of society. But on all these counts, soul is neglected.~ Thomas Moore
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ON THE HOME ENVIRONMENT
The way you help heal the world is you start with your own family.
~ Mother Teresa
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
~ Frederick Douglass
A thing vitally important in my life ... was brought home to me when one of my oldest friends said, "In my house I was a child. In your family's house I was a person."
~ Margaret Mead
The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home.
~ David O. McKay
There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.
~ Gandhi
The child's social development is always retarded if the child does not have a single main mother figure constantly about him, ie, a person who has enough time and motherly love for the child. In this sentence, every word is equally important. Single does not mean two, three, or four persons. Constant means always the same person. Motherly means a person who shows all of the behavior toward the child which we designate as "motherly." Main mother figure means that secondary mother figures (father, brothers, sisters, grandparents) may support the main mother figure, but may not substitute for her. Person means that the respective adult has to support the child with his whole being and has to have time for the child.
~ Theodore Helbrügge
We do not need to be told whether to be strict or permissive with our children. What we do need is to have respect for their needs, their feelings, and their individuality, as well as for our own.
~ Rita Nakashima Brock
A house is not a home unless it contains fire and food for the mind as well as the body.
~ Margaret Fuller
To be Queen Elizabeth within a certain area, deciding sales, banquets, labors, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, books, sheets, cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene. I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No: A woman's function is laborious because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.
~ G. K. Chesterton
Another merit of home is that it preserves the diversity between individuals. If we were all alike, it might be convenient for the bureaucrat and the statistician, but it would be very dull, and would lead to a very unprogressive society.
~ Bertrand Russell
I don't see homeschooling as some kind of answer to badness of schools. I think that the home is the proper base for the exploration of the world which we call learning or education. Home would be the best base no matter how good the schools were. The proper relationship of the schools to home is the relationship of the library to home, or the skating rink to home. It is a supplementary resource.
~ John Holt
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ON LIVING LIFE
Life is just what you make it.
Man is born
to live,
not to prepare
for life.
~ Boris Pasternak
Childhood is not preparation for adulthood - it is a part of life.
~ A. Neill
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
I believe that school makes complete fools of our young men, because they see and hear nothing of ordinary life there.
~ Petronius
We learn not for school, but for life.
~ Seneca
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ON MAKING HARD DECISIONS
Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. ~ David Lloyd George
It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.
~ Anonymous
Never doubt that a group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
~ Margaret Mead
One person with courage makes a majority.
~ Andrew Jackson
A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues ... is on the way to totalitarianism and death.
~ Robert M. Hutchins
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Cowardice asks the question: is it safe?
Expediency asks the question: is it politic?
Vanity asks the question: is it popular?
But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular - but one must take it because it's right.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.
~ Pericles
Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.
~ Samuel Johnson
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
~ Mark Twain
Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
~ St. Francis Assisi
The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.
~ Dawson Trotman
Eagles
don't
flock.
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HOMESCHOOL FAQ
Questions about homeschooling or unschooling? Ask them here!
If you have questions about homeschooling, don't miss this amazingly helpful resource page! All your questions answered, plus lots more answers to questions you haven't even thought of yet!
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Homeschool FAQ
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Do you have questions about whether you should homeschool, or how you can? You've come to the right place. Here is an extensive list of questions and answers, with links to some of the best resources on the web. I hope to expand this lens significan...
Are You a Homeschooler on Squidoo?
Meet more homeschoolers on Squidoo!
Add your lensography or lensmaster page here and meet other homeschoolers on Squidoo!-
Homeschoolers on Squidoo
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Wouldn't it be fun to know the lens you're looking at was made by a fellow homeschooler? Let's link up! Add your link here, and you'll be added as a featured lensmaster! If you know other homeschoolers on Squidoo, tell them to add their links, too!
BE QUOTABLE! FEEDBACK FROM YOU!
Squidoo Homeschool Quotes
If I missed your favorite homeschooling quotation, please cite it for us here!
submit
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Reply
- RuntFarmSeries RuntFarmSeries Nov 19, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
- Spreading the word about this lens to my homeschooling mom friends right away. What a great collection of homeschool quotes -- thank you from Amanda Lorenzo! 5 Stars and lensrolling this lovely . . .
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Reply
- AmandaSomers AmandaSomers Nov 9, 2009 @ 2:13 am
- Excellent and wonderful lens. Lot of learning and knowledge providing stuff.
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Reply
- stargazer00 stargazer00 Oct 30, 2009 @ 1:45 am
- Blessed and featured on Angels Unaware!
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Reply
- merylvdm merylvdm Oct 29, 2009 @ 7:44 am
- We homeschool because we want a high academic standard for our kids. These quotes are great. I can already see many of these things in my own kids and know that all the long hours I put into their schooling is worth it. My eldest is now at college - she had no problem getting into 4 colleges with acceptance rates of under 25% and she is doing well in the courses she has chosen. In addition, my kids have a wide knowledge of the world and the ability to interact with people of all ages, nationalities and beliefs.
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Reply
- debraanne debraanne Oct 24, 2009 @ 11:34 am
- It must have taken you forever to get all these quotes together!
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Reply
- Heather426 Heather426 Oct 14, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
- Blessed by a new Squid Angel today, because this is an amazing lens!
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Reply
- lisasboutique lisasboutique Oct 12, 2009 @ 6:04 am
- Love this lens...I home schooled two of my boys last year and it was amazing. Unfortunately I had to send them back to school this year and it breaks my heart to see the difference school is doing to them.
Next year I am thinking about Homeschooling them again.
Great leans.
Cheers
Lisa
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Reply
- alwayslearning alwayslearning Oct 11, 2009 @ 7:24 pm
- In response to Countreichmuth Oct 10, 2009 @ 11:03 pm: "Does anybody homeschool their kids for college?"
You, and others, might be interested in the informative article :)
M.I.T. Calls Academia's Bluff, by Gary North
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north748.html
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Reply
- alwayslearning alwayslearning Oct 11, 2009 @ 7:19 pm
- Seen on a bumper sticker :)
We home school because we have seen *the village,* and it is full of idiots.
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Reply
- stargazer00 stargazer00 Oct 5, 2009 @ 7:17 pm
- Homeschooling rocks, and so does that great new Giant 100 Badge!!
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Homeschool Tweets!
Follow homeschoolers on Twitter!
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- Betsy_Markman
- Please pray, as 12y/o son is NOT having a good day at homeschool, and there's not much time left in today's schedule.
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- AppleofGold
- @jamalhbryant Being able to stay home (i'm single), and homeschool my children. God is great!!!
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- DawnSchilling
- Homeschool Groups and Resources in Indiana A-H http://bit.ly/7c328j
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- HSArticles
- Article: Training Up Workers at Home #homeschool #homeschooling #homeschoolmoms #education #hsc http://ow.ly/ELRt
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- Cara_Jen
- What are you thankful for? I'm thankful I have the option to #homeschool my kids. They are amazing and we are loving it!
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- lashawnw
- FYI: Ask me why I stay at home/homeschool or any other life choice be prepared for the REAL answer, not the one that alleviates YOUR guilt.
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- jolenecmom
- I have finally finished setting up the assessments for Corbin, now I need to plan our bible lesson. Hmmm, what to do? #homeschool
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- mytfeed
- Homeschool Groups and Resources in Indiana A-H http://bit.ly/6wpYqD
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- ahermitt
- at families.com: Homeschool Groups and Resources in Indiana A-H: Getting involved with other homeschoolers is very ... http://bit.ly/8yPJrY
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- hebertron
- RT @StAidensHSchool: St Aiden’s Homeschool ~ New Updates and Downloads :): I have added new sections and additional pages to a.. h ...
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Thanks to tagsforkids for his angelic SquidArt.
Squidoo logo is a trademark of Squidoo LLC. Graphics, Squidart and Squidoodles © 2008 by tagsforkids (Steve Thompson).
Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.
by tandemonimom
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