Facts Of School Quotes & Sayings

Politeness does not prevent a person from feeling angry or upset or hurt. What it does is delay the expression of the feeling. Manners counteract the rush to judgement. They allow a few moments for more information to emerge, for the ire to reduce slightly before doing anything decisive. The delay built into politeness allows you time to determine the true facts. It provides space to understand the issue behind the anger. If you knew more, you might not be so irate. — The School Of Life

In brief, the teaching process, as commonly observed, has nothing to do with the investigation and establishment of facts, assuming that actual facts may ever be determined. Its sole purpose is to cram the pupils, as rapidly and as painlessly as possible, with the largest conceivable outfit of current axioms, in all departments of human thought - to make the pupil a good citizen, which is to say, a citizen differing as little as possible, in positive knowledge and habits of mind, from all other citizens. In other words, it is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more nearly his own mind pulsates with the great ebbs and flows of popular delusion and emotion, the more admirably he performs his function. He may be an ass, but this is surely no demerit in a man paid to make asses of his customers. — H.L. Mencken

So everything turns on whether the reported events actually happened. No other religion bases its entire edifice on datable facts. The events it reports either happened or they didn't, but the result is that the gospel creates heralds, not speculative pundits, mystics, and moralists. Jesus Christ does not create a school or a pious community for the spiritually and morally gifted. Rather, he brings a kingdom - the kingdom of God - which casts down the proud and lifts up the downcast. — Michael S. Horton

I think we're raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional.
We have kids in elementary school who are being urged to take stands on political issues, to write letters to congressmen and presidents about nuclear energy.
They're not a decade old, and they're being thrown these kinds of questions that can absorb the lifetime of a very brilliant and learned man. And they're being taught that it's important to have views, and they're not being taught that it's important to know what you're talking about.
It's important to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more important to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different, and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. They disregard that. They hear something, they hear some rhetoric, and they run with it. — Thomas Sowell

Religion is not the hero of the day, but the zero. In any exposition of the products of brains, the Sunday-School takes the booby prize ... Man has asked for truth and the Church has given him miracles. He has asked for knowledge, and the Church has given him theology. He has asked for facts, and the Church has given him the Bible. This foolishness should stop. The Church has nothing to give man that has not been in cold storage for two thousand years. Anything would become stale in that time. — Marilla Ricker

The problem is that most of us hated school. His fallacy was much the same as progressivism's: the assumption that if he could just explain the facts clearly, build a convincing enough argument, eventually everyone would come around to his conclusion. But people aren't interested in lectures; they want to hear stories. Which is why the right holds the demagogic advantage over the left in America; they tell a simpler, more satisfying story. — Tim Kreider

What kind of authority can there be for an 'Apostle' who, unlike the other Apostles, had never been prepared for the Apostolic office in Jesus' own school but had only later dared to claim the Apostolic office on the basis of his own authority? The only question comes to be how the apostle Paul appears in his Epistles to be so indifferent to the historical facts of the life of Jesus ... He bears himself but little like a disciple who has received the doctrines and the principles which he preaches from the Master whose name he bears. — Ferdinand Christian Baur

Kaushik, what about a picture?" my father suggested. I shook my head. I had left my camera, my father's old Yashica, at school. "But you always have it with you." That look of irritated disappointment, the one that had appeared the day my mother died and was missing now that he'd married Chitra, passed briefly across my father's face. "I forgot it," I said. It was true, I did always have the camera with me. Even on quiet weekends when I came home and my father and I saw no one I would bring it, taking it with me on walks. This time I had left it behind, knowing that I would not want to document anything. "I don't understand," my father said. "Neither do I," I replied. "You haven't wanted a picture of anything in years." "That's not true." "It is." We were stating facts and at the same time arguing, an argument whose depths only he and I could fully comprehend. — Jhumpa Lahiri

The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing. — Neil Gaiman

The premium so often put in schools upon external "discipline," and upon marks and rewards, upon promotion and keeping back, are the obverse of the lack of attention given to life situations in which the meaning of facts, ideas, principles, and problems is vitally brought home. — John Dewey

Every now and then, I'm lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side and light on scepticism. They're curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I'm asked follow-up questions. They've never heard of the notion of a 'dumb question'.
But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize 'facts'. By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts, has gone out of them. They've lost much of the wonder, and gained very little scepticism. They're worried about asking 'dumb' questions; they're willing to accept inadequate answers; they don't pose follow-up questions; the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. — Carl Sagan

I'd stand at the front of the classroom, teaching my primary-school charges basic facts about language, life, the world, and I'd find that at the same time I was teaching myself these basic facts all over again - filtered through the eyes and minds of these children. Done the right way, this was a refreshing experience. Profound, even. I got along well with my pupils, their mothers, and my fellow teachers. Still — Haruki Murakami

Over the years I have written creative non-fiction related to the curricula I produced, first as an elementary school art instructor, then for nearly two decades as a museum education curator. While any curriculum I wrote was based on facts as well as best and accepted practices, to add imaginative interest and encourage my students' engagement I put those facts in the context of stories, invented situations that brought to life the remote or unfamiliar — Susan Bass Marcus

They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts. Their measures are half measures and makeshifts merely. They put off the day of settlement, and meanwhile the debt accumulates. — Henry David Thoreau

While public school history courses in the United States stress the horrors of the German Nazi murder of 6 million Jews and Josef Stalin's pogroms against racial minorities and political dissidents in the Soviet Union, the facts that the U.S. Army's solution to the 'Indian Problem' was the prototype for the Nazi 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish Problem' and that the North American Indian Reservation was the model for the twentieth century gulag and concentration camp, are conveniently overlooked. — Jonathan Ott

But the child grows up, and reaches adolescence. He stands on the threshold of life, and the school-bench is left behind him. School has taught him but little - a few facts and some elementary information. But he has learnt to reason logically, and to examine the solid foundations on which the world rests. He begins to apply his logic to everything, and when he approaches religion, doubt trembles in his soul. The absurd improbability of the legends of the Middle Ages disgusts him, and at the same time he is obsessed by the fear of remaining without a relegion, a fear which has been inculcated into his mind by his entire upbringing. Calm and cold-blooded people think it all out, and become confirmed Atheists. Not so, however, those others with fervent, burning souls! — Aimee Dostoyevsky

Michael applied himself better than I did at school. His thirst for knowledge was far greater than any of the rest of us. He was that curious kid who asked, 'Why? Why? Why?' and he listened to and logged every detail. I'm sure his head had an in-built recording chip for data, facts, figures, lyrics and dance moves. — Jermaine Jackson

I'm just one of the kids, and all because the students at Hamilton Heights High School listened to the facts, educated their parents and themselves, and believed in me. — Ryan White

Watch a man
say, a politician
being interviewed on television, an you are observing a demonstration of what both he and his interrogators learned in school: all questions have answers, and it is a good thing to give an answer even if there is none to give, even if you don't understand the question, even if the question contains erroneous assumptions, even if you are ignorant of the facts required to answer. Have you ever heard a man being interviewed say, "I don't have the faintest idea," or "I don't know enough even to guess," or "I have been asked that question before, but all my answers to it seem to be wrong?" One does not "blame" men, especially if they are politicians, for providing instant answers to all questions. The public requires that they do, since the public has learned that instant answer giving is the most important sign of an educated man. — Neil Postman

School success is not predicted by a child's fund of facts or a precocious ability to read as much as by emotional and social measures; being self-assured and interested: knowing what kind of behavior is expected and how to rein in the impulse to misbehave; being able to wait, to follow directions, and to turn to teachers for help; and expressing needs while getting along with other children. — Daniel Goleman

I learned my "facts of life" on toilet walls. I'd walk up in school bathrooms and there would be crude drawings and figures engaged in sex. That's how I learned. — Liam Neeson

Tthe first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form ... You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. — Charlie Munger

Those who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts. — Henry David Thoreau

Comin' from the school of hard knocks,
Some perpetrate ... they drink Clorox.
Attack the black, cause I know they lack exact
The cold facts, and still they try to Xerox. — Chuck D

Trivia, as I've said before, shouldn't really be called "trivia." Facts about history, geography, books, movies, music - this is the stuff that used to be called good old-fashioned "general knowledge," the stuff that everybody was supposed to remember from school, regardless of their career niche. We lost something the more we specialized - it started to drain away this vast pool of information that everybody knew. Knowledge was what connected us, and now it distinguishes us. — Ken Jennings

The Public School, then, was right to eject a child who did not learn. Because what the child was learning was not merely facts or the basis of a money-making or even useful career. It went much deeper. The child learned that certain things in the culture around him were worth preserving at any cost. His values were fused with some objective human enterprise. And so he himself became a part of the tradition handed down to him; he maintained his heritage during his lifetime and even improved on it. He cared. — Philip K. Dick

Science is the most intimate school of resignation and humility, for it teaches us to bow before the seemingly most insignificant of facts. — Miguel De Unamuno

It has been said that the primary function of schools is to impart enough facts to make children stop asking questions. Some, with whom the schools do not succeed, become scientists ... and I never stopped asking questions. — Knut Schmidt-Nielsen

Oh, yeah, looks like things have been super easy for you this far. Look, high school is hell for most people. It's one of the many facts of life. But I had friends. I was happy with who I was, and I'm happy with who I am now. — Leah Rae Miller

Someone asked the other day, "Why do we go to school?" Pat, with vigor
unusual in her, said, "So when we grow up we won't be stupid." These
children equate stupidity with ignorance. Is this what they mean when they
call themselves stupid? Is this one of the reasons why they are so ashamed of
not knowing something? If so, have we, perhaps un-knowingly, taught them
to feel this way? We should clear up this distinction, show them that it is
possible to know very few facts, but make very good use of them.
Conversely, one can know many facts and still act stupidly. The learned fool
is by no means rare in this country. — John Holt

Around them the stubbled land was marked off by plaques and signs that explained to visitors what had happened here on a long-ago July day not unlike this one. But Peter already knew all they said and more. He looked around at the people with their noses tucked in brochures and guidebooks, and those trailing, sheeplike, after tour guides and park employees. He was used to feeling somewhat out of place most everywhere he went
at school or the barbershop, even at home, but here, where he knew everything, all the names and dates and facts, he somehow seemed to fit, and the knowledge of this welled up inside him. It was like he'd been born a blue flower in a field full of red ones and had only now been plunked down in a meadow so blue it might as well have been the ocean. — Jennifer E. Smith

Girls leave school crammed full of interesting historical facts and elegant Spanish subjunctives, so proud of their ability to study hard and get the best grades. But somewhere between the classroom and the cubicle, the rules change and they don't understand it. They slam into a world of work that doesn't reward them for perfect spelling and exquisite manners. — Katty Kay

Well, the traveling teachers do come through every few months," said the Baron.
"Yes, sir, I know, sir, and they're useless, sir. They teach facts, not understanding. It's like teaching people about forests by showing them a saw. I want a proper school, sir, to teach reading and writing, and most of all thinking, sir, so people can find what they're good at, because someone doing what they really like is always an asset to any country, and too often people never find out until it's too late. — Terry Pratchett

I do not know whether to be delighted or outraged by the fact that Literary Theory: An Introduction was the subject of a study by a well known U.S. business school, which was intrigued to discover how an academic text could become a best-seller. — Terry Eagleton

The mission of a great school is not to cram you with facts so that you can regurgitate them ... This gives many boys such a distaste for learning that they never read another book as long as they live. No, the mission is to inspire you with a taste for scholarship - a taste which will last you all your life. — David Ogilvy

When I think back on the twenty years I spent in school, what sticks with me isn't any particular subject, learning tool, or classroom. It is the teachers who brought my education to life and drove my interest forward, so that my passion for learning continued, despite the long days, the hard chairs, the difficult problems. These women and men were giants. They were underpaid, and they put up with all sorts of crap, but they made me the person I am today vastly more than the facts they taught. That relationship is what digital education technology cannot ever replicate or replace, and why a great teacher will always provide a more innovative model for the future of education than the most sophisticated device, software, or platform. — David Sax

The thing that's depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they've never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference between 'lie' and 'lay,' let alone 'its' and 'it's.' And they're in graduate school! — Maxine Kumin

If you're studying geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life. — Steve Martin