[ps2id id=’3.4.Appx2′ target=”/] Quotations
I enjoy collecting quotations. Below are some of my favorites, organized by topic. More are available here: http://www.academia.edu/3460176/Quotes_about_cooperative_learning_and_education_generally
Cooperation
Nothing new that is really interesting comes without collaboration.
♥ James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA
A rope of three strands is not easily parted. (Tali yang tiga lembar itu tak suang-suang putus)
♥ Malay proverb
If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
♥ African proverb, cited by Dr. Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity on the Occasion of the Singapore Environment Lecture 2008
The wise do not lay up treasure. The more they give to others, the more they have for themselves.
♥ Lao-Tze, The Simple Way
It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked through understanding.
♥ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Ubuntu (pronounced Ooh-BOON-too) – an African word (not sure which language) meaning “I am, because we are”
♥ Slogan of the 2008 National Basketball Association (the main men’s professional basketball league in the U.S.) champion Boston Celtics
A man there was, though some did count him mad.
The more he cast away, the more he had.
♥ John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
♥ Source unknown
Sometimes people learn more from the learnING person than they do from the learnED person.
♥ William Hill, Learning Through Discussion, pamphlet, no publication information available
The acquisition of skills is not an end in itself. They are things to be put to use, and that use is their contribution to a common and shared life.
♥ John Dewey, 1934, The New Era in Home and School, in Archambault, R. D. (1964). John Dewey on education: Selected writings. New York, NY: The Modern Library, p. 11
[T]he schools, through reliance upon the spur of competition and the bestowing of special honors and prizes, only build up and strengthen the disposition that makes an individual when he leaves school employ his special talents and superior skill to outwit his fellow without respect for the welfare of others.
♥ John Dewey, 1934, The New Era in Home and School, in Archambault, R. D. (1964). John Dewey on education: Selected writings. New York: The Modern Library, p. 11
There is no greater egoism than that of learning when it is treated simply as a mark of personal distinction to be held and cherished for its own sake. … [K]knowledge is a possession held in trust for the furthering of the well-being of all
♥ John Dewey, 1934, The New Era in Home and School, in Archambault, R. D. (1964). John Dewey on education: Selected writings. New York, NY: The Modern Library, p. 12
Proust once said that the only true voyage would be not to travel through a hundred different lands with the same pair of eyes but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes. Small group work is about learning through different pairs of eyes.
♥ Jean Ruddock, 1978, Learning through small group discussion. Guilford, Surrey: Society for Research into Higher Education, University of Surrey, p. 59
Education
I hear and I forget
I see and I remember
I do and I understand
♥ Anonymous
You cannot teach people anything.
You can only help them discover it within themselves.
♥ Galileo
A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
♥ Horace Mann, 19th century, US educator, founder of Antioch University
Tell me and I’ll listen. Show me and I’ll watch. Involve me and I’ll learn.
♥ Teton Lakota Native Americans
In the ideal classroom, the students speak more than the teacher.
♥ Uno Cygnaeus, 19th century Finnish educator, cited in Sahlberg, 2014, http://wapo.st/1lDgNkF
If [educators] are indeed wise, they do not bid students to enter the house of their wisdom but rather lead students to the threshold of the students’ own minds.
♥ Kahlil Gibron, 1923
Little learning is retained when it is learned on command
♥ Jean Piaget
Being Positive
People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong.
Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?
♥ Thich Nhat Hanh
The Value of Disagreement
The best way I know to defeat an enemy is to make him (or her) a friend.
♥ Abraham Lincoln
… let us unite, not in spite of our differences, but through them. For differences can never be wiped away, and life would be so much the poorer without them. Let all human races keep their own personalities, and yet come together, not in a uniformity that is dead, but in a unity that is living.”
♥ Rabindranath Tagore, 1913 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
Our … advantage was that we had evolved unstated but fruitful methods of collaboration … If either of us suggested a new idea, the other, while taking it seriously, would attempt to demolish it in a candid but non-hostile manner.
♥ Francis Crick, the other co-discoverer of DNA
A clash in doctrines is not a disaster; it is an opportunity.
♥ John Cardinal Newman
Below is a section of dialogue from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night between a Clown who is very good at playing with words and a nobleman, the Duke of Orsino.
Clown: Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of mDuke: I know thee well: how dost thou, my good fellow?
Clown: Truly, sir, the better for my foes and the worse for my friends.
Duke: Just the contrary; the better for thy friends.
Clown: No, sir, the worse.
Duke: How can that be?e; now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass; so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself; and by my friends I am abused: … (Act V, Scene 1)
An enemy will agree, but a friend will argue.
♥ Russian Proverb
I happen to feel that the degree of a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.
♥ Lisa Alther, Kinflicks, 1975
To repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it, requires brains.
♥ Mary Pettibone Poole, A Glass Eye at a Keyhole, 1938
We need many trees to make a forest
♥ Vietnamese proverb
Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth, or the only truth.
♥ Charles A. Dana (1819 – 1897)
The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
♥ Elbert Hubbard (1856 – 1915)
If we never fight, how can we ever get to know each other?
♥ Cantonese proverb
He (or she) that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our friend.
♥ Edmund Burke