Your child will delight and exasperate you, thrill and annoy you. By accident, really, your child will ask you to grow, too. If you can notice when you’re triggered and restore yourself to equilibrium before you take action, if you can soothe your own anxiety, if you can reflect on your own experience and make […]
Kohn: Shallow Rewards
The practice of rewarding people conveniently spares us from asking hard questions about why we are asking people to do things that are devoid of interest in the first place. -Alfie Kohn, from Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes
Holt: Unpredictable Essentials
Since we can’t know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned. -John Holt, from […]
Thoreau: Ditch vs. Brook
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. -Henry David Thoreau
Let Your Curiosity Lead You
Anyone can memorize facts and figures. The real way to learn anything is to go out and experience it. Let your curiosity lead you. -The Man in the Yellow Hat, from Curious George the Movie