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The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.
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Ken Robinson (The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything)
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My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator.
The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible.This often means giving up some grandiose ideas about yourself: that you’re uniquely intelligent, or spectacularly talented, or intimidatingly attractive, or especially victimized in ways other people could never imagine. This means giving up your sense of entitlement and your belief that you’re somehow owed something by this world.
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Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
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When I heard about these lessons, I thought they would be a dreadful waste of my time. I pictured two very silly girls uninterested in any sort of instruction. But that describes neither Miss Gray nor yourself. I should tell you, I used to train younger Shadowhunters in Madrid. And there were quite a few of them who didn’t have the same native ability that you do. You’re a talented student, and it is my pleasure to teach you.”
Sophie felt herself flush scarlet. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am. I was pleasantly surprised the first time I came here and again so the next time and the next. I found that I was looking forward to it. In fact, it would be fair to say that since my return home, I have hated everything in London except these hours with you.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
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Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice.
If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of love we can find.
If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whos hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes.
The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering.
Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.
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Julian Assange
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There’s a vast amount of research on what happens when we believe a student is especially talented. We begin to lavish extra attention on them and hold them to higher expectations. We expect them to excel, and that expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Angela Duckworth (Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance)
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Self-discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did IQ. Self-discipline also predicted which students would improve their grades over the course of the school year, whereas IQ did not.… Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.”5.2
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Charles Duhigg (The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business)
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Rose," Alberta said, leaning toward me. "I'm going to be blunt with you. I'm not going to give you lectures or demand any explanations. Honestly, since you aren't my student anymore, I don't have the right to ask or tell you anything."
"You can lecture," I told her. "I've always respected you and want to hear what you have to say."
The ghost of a smile flashed on her face. "All right, here it is. You screwed up."
"Wow. You weren't kidding about bluntness."
"The reasons don't matter. You shouldn't have left. You shouldn't have dropped out. Your education and training are too valuable—no matter how much you think you know—and you are too talented to risk throwing away your future."
I almost laughed. "To tell you the truth? I'm not sure what my future is anymore."
"Which is why you need to graduate."
"But I dropped out."
She snorted. "Then drop back in!"
"I—what? How?"
"With paperwork. Just like everything else in the world.
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Richelle Mead (Blood Promise (Vampire Academy, #4))
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Inventions are not solely the making of material things, inventions are also the mental unleashing of ideas by a genuis with a sixth sense.
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Michael Bassey Johnson
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life is a classroom. we are both student and teacher. each day is a test. and each day we receive a passing or failing grade in one particular subject: grace. grace is compassion, gratitude, surrender, faith, forgiveness, good manners, reverence, and the list goes on. it's something money can't buy and credentials rarely produce. being the smartest, the prettiest, the most talented, the richest, or even the poorest, can't help. being a humble person can and being a helpful person can guide you through your days with grace and gratitude.
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Gary Hart
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Teaching is about helping students to cultivate talents, foster understanding, and develop skills.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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The system manufactures students who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it. In
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William Deresiewicz (Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life)
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if students leave school less curious than when they started, we have failed them.
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George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
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It is not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.
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Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Lectures to My Students)
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It is not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus.
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Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Lectures To My Students)
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As I see it, the aims of education are to enable students to understand the world around them and the talents within them so that they can become fulfilled individuals and active, compassionate citizens.
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Ken Robinson (Creative Schools: Revolutionizing Education from the Ground Up)
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We should reject the view that high culture, as the possession of an elite, is of no use to those who don’t possess it. This is as false as the view that science or higher mathematics are useless to those who don’t understand them. Scientific knowledge exists because a few talented people are prepared to devote their energy to pursuing it. That is what a university is for: and since you cannot pass on difficult knowledge without discriminating between the students who can absorb it and those who cannot, discrimination is a social good. The same is true of high culture. Those able to acquire it will be a minority and the process of cultural transmission will be critically impeded if that teacher must teach Mozart and Lady Gaga side by side to satisfy some egalitarian agenda.
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Roger Scruton
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Education is the system that’s supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world. Instead, it is stifling the individual talents and abilities of too many students and killing their motivation to learn. There’s a huge irony in the middle of all of this.
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Ken Robinson (The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything)
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There’s a big difference between teaching and instructing. Telling kids what to do and giving them assignments is not teaching, that’s instructing. On the contrary, teaching includes helping students to cultivate talents, foster understanding, and develop skills. Anyone can instruct, but teaching is a gift.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
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He was ego-free, which was very rare in the design student world. Most design students had lots of ego and very little talent. Jony was the other way around.
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Leander Kahney (Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products)
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These are gifted adolescent women who don’t get to be judged on their impressive talent: their bodies are already paramount to the work they want to do and it’s only going to get worse. At sixteen these students are being judged on their sexual attractiveness. Their talent is a gift, but it is not enough.
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Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
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If we want to do better things for students, we have to become the guinea pigs and immerse ourselves in new learning opportunities to understand how to create the necessary changes. We rarely create something different until we experience something different.
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George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
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When I was a young philosopher, I asked a senior colleague, Pat Suppes (then and now a famous philosopher of science and an astute student of human nature), what the secret of happiness was. Instead of giving me advice, he made a rather droll observation about what a lot of people who were happy with themselves seem to have done, namely:
1. Take a careful inventory of their shortcomings and flaws
2. Adopt a code of values that treats these things as virtues
3. Admire themselves for living up to it
Brutal people admire themselves for being manly; compulsive pedants admire themselves for their attention to detail; naturally selfish and mean people admire themselves for their dedication to helping the market reward talent and punish failure, and so on.
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John R. Perry (The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing)
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Many a graduate student has come to grief when they discover, after a decade of being told they were “good at math,” that in fact they have no real mathematical talent and are just very good at following directions. Math is not about following directions, it’s about making new directions.
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Paul Lockhart (A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form)
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The point of education isn’t to train students with specific job skills they have already identified; it is to show them what they don’t already know, and that they don’t know they don’t know. In other words, to help them build a telescope so they can discover their own talents and interests as scholars and human beings.
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Shawn Lawrence Otto (the war on Science)
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Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent.
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Tom Perrotta (Little Children)
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Consider how much deeper learning could be if “creation” was a non-negotiable in the learning for both us and our students.
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George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
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In our world today, what is a student more likely going to need to be able to write: an essay or a blog post?” This question pushes some people to a place of discomfort
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George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
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If students leave school less curious than when they started, we have failed them. #InnovatorsMindset
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George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
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Being a master of one thing is better than being a student of many.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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According to a 1995 study, a sample of Japanese eighth graders spent 44 percent of their class time inventing, thinking, and actively struggling with underlying concepts. The study's sample of American students, on the other hand, spent less than 1 percent of their time in that state. “The Japanese want their kids to struggle,” said Jim Stigler, the UCLA professor who oversaw the study and who cowrote The Teaching Gap with James Hiebert. “Sometimes the [Japanese] teacher will purposely give the wrong answer so the kids can grapple with the theory. American teachers, though, worked like waiters. Whenever there was a struggle, they wanted to move past it, make sure the class kept gliding along. But you don't learn by gliding.
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Daniel Coyle (The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else)
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Choosing the right career is the most difficult task for a person who is multi-talented and versatile. Because its hard to decide what field to go into, when you are good at too many things.
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Saad Salman
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The desire to make art begins early. Among the very young this is encouraged (or at least indulged as harmless) but the push toward a 'serious' education soon exacts a heavy toll on dreams and fantasies....Yet for some the desire persists, and sooner or later must be addressed. And with good reason: your desire to make art -- beautiful or meaningful or emotive art -- is integral to your sense of who you are. Life and Art, once entwined, can quickly become inseparable; at age ninety Frank Lloyd Wright was still designing, Imogen Cunningham still photographing, Stravinsky still composing, Picasso still painting.
But if making art gives substance to your sense of self, the corresponding fear is that you're not up to the task -- that you can't do it, or can't do it well, or can't do it again; or that you're not a real artist, or not a good artist, or have no talent, or have nothing to say. The line between the artist and his/her work is a fine one at best, and for the artist it feels (quite naturally) like there is no such line. Making art can feel dangerous and revealing. Making art is dangerous and revealing. Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be. For many people, that alone is enough to prevent their ever getting started at all -- and for those who do, trouble isn't long in coming. Doubts, in fact, soon rise in swarms:
"I am not an artist -- I am a phony. I have nothing worth saying. I'm not sure what I'm doing. Other people are better than I am. I'm only a [student/physicist/mother/whatever]. I've never had a real exhibit. No one understands my work. No one likes my work. I'm no good.
Yet viewed objectively, these fears obviously have less to do with art than they do with the artist. And even less to do with the individual artworks. After all, in making art you bring your highest skills to bear upon the materials and ideas you most care about. Art is a high calling -- fears are coincidental. Coincidental, sneaky and disruptive, we might add, disguising themselves variously as laziness, resistance to deadlines, irritation with materials or surroundings, distraction over the achievements of others -- indeed anything that keeps you from giving your work your best shot. What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don't, quit. Each step in the artmaking process puts that issue to the test.
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David Bayles (Art and Fear)
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Ironically, it is therefore often the highly gifted and talented students, who receive a lot of praise, who are more in danger of developing a fixed mindset and getting stuck. Having been praised for what they are (talented and gifted) rather than for what they do, they tend to focus on keeping this impression intact, rather than exposing themselves to new challenges and the possibility of learning from failure.
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Sönke Ahrens (How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers)
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(Each year, students whose performance was deemed unsatisfactory were cut from the program—often as many as half. To survive until fourth year was proof of either talent or dumb luck. In my case, the latter.)
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M.L. Rio (If We Were Villains)
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Dr. Doris Parker: I have your ten week report. You know what it says "F, F, F… ". Do you know what that means? It means you don't care.
Student: You're brilliant. (Pause) Can I go now?
Dr. Doris Parker: (Sarcastic laugh) God! you're shallow, disgusting creature. You wanna know the truth?
Dr. Doris Parker: One, you're not gonna be in a band or a model missy because you have no ambition. With no skills you'd be competing with 80 percent of US work force for minimum wage job which you will work at for the rest of your life, till you're replaced by a computer.
Student: I don't care!
Dr. Doris Parker: The only talent you ever have is *insult*. Your life will basically become a carnival of pain and when you can't stand not one more day, not one more hour, it will get worse, much worse. Every day I come to this office and I listen to you kids *insult* all over your selves. It is so easy to be careless, it takes courage and character to care. Not that you have any of those qualities.
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Doris Parker
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By believing that only some of our students will ever develop a love of books and reading, we ignore those who do not fall into books and reading on their own. We renege on our responsibility to teach students how to become self-actualized readers. We are selling our students short by believing that reading is a talent and that lifelong reading behaviors cannot be taught.
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Donalyn Miller (Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits)
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His wealth, his upbringing, his reputation, well known among the students, as a young militant on the left, his sociability, even his courage when he delivered carefully measured speeches against powerful people within and outside the university—all this had given him an aura that automatically extended to me, as his fiancée or girlfriend or companion, as if the pure and simple fact that he loved me were the public sanctioning of my talents.
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Elena Ferrante (The Story of a New Name (The Neapolitan Novels, #2))
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And whether or not the educators who are trying to raise up America's students can actually set and meet higher academic standards, our cultural values make their job next to impossible. It's so much easier for pundits and politicians to point out figures and blame the people who are in the trenches every day than it is to get in there with them, or even to find out what actually goes on in those trenches. It's so much easier for parents to blame teachers when their kids get in trouble than to do the heavy lifting required at home to keep kids on track. And it's so much easier for us as a nation to cross our fingers and hope that we'll "get lucky" with the innovative "solutions" being tested on America's schools today than it is for us to roll up our sleeves and invest our own time, talent, and money in the schools that are even now-- with or without us-- shaping our nation's future.
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Tony Danza (I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had: My Year as a Rookie Teacher at Northeast High)
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He's high," Kevin told Neil. "He tells me when he's sober, so I always know. How did you figure it out?" "They're twins, but they're not the same." Neil lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "One of them hates your obsession with Exy while the other couldn't care less." Kevin looked to Andrew, but Andrew only had eyes for Neil. Andrew took a second to process those words before he started laughing. "He's a comedian, too? An athlete and a comic and a student. How multitalented. What a grand addition to the Fox line. I can't wait to find out what else he can do. Perhaps we should throw a talent show and find out?
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Nora Sakavic (The Foxhole Court (All for the Game, #1))
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In the main, the trouble with American education is that we have put into practice the educational philosophy expounded by John Dewey and his disciples. In varying degrees we have adopted what has been called "progressive education." Subscribing to the egalitarian notion that every child must have the same education, we have neglected to provide an educational system which will tax the talents and stir the ambitions of our best students and which will thus insure us the kind of leaders we will need in the future. In
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Barry M. Goldwater (The Conscience of a Conservative)
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the test scores used in admissions are a measure of what colleges take in, not what they produce. The fact that an Ivy League school has freshmen with high SAT scores tells us that it is a good magnet for talent but nothing else. What should matter is how students, including those with low SAT scores, improve over the course of their time in school.
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Fareed Zakaria (In Defense of a Liberal Education)
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Perhaps the amazing thing we can do is make growth mandatory—for ourselves as educators, as well as for our students. That is how we can truly serve our children.
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George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
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Making across the curriculum means students as novelists, mathematicians, historians, composers, artists, engineers—rather than being the recipients of instruction.
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George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
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If some talents were withheld, the Withholder knows why. He has done all things well.
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Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Lectures to My Students)
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In our world today, what is a student more likely going to need to be able to write: an essay or a blog post?
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George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
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students must be taught to think critically about what they are facing.
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George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
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You empower ignorance if you as teacher hide yourself among the students because you know less and give less... Don’t hide your identity, make it a reality!
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Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Watchwords)
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Any training is initially difficult, but with persistence practice, we can master the art.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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Really, Talia? Erik? He’d just sleep with all of the students. We’d never find the spy if he went undercover.
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Sophie Davis (Caged (Talented Saga, #2))
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Life is a series of problems to be analyzed and addressed. How do we fix our failing schools? How do we reduce violence? These problem-centered questions are usually the wrong ones to ask. They focus on deficits, not gifts. A problem conversation tends to focus on one moment in time—the moment when a student didn’t graduate from high school, the moment when a young person commits a crime, the moment when a person is homeless. But actual lives are lived cumulatively. It takes a whole series of shocks before a person becomes homeless—loss of a job, breakdown in family relationship, maybe car problems or some transportation issue. It takes a whole series of shocks before a kid drops out of school. If you abstract away from the cumulative nature of life and define the problem as one episode, you are abstracting away from how life is lived. All conversations are either humanizing or dehumanizing, and problem-centered conversations tend to be impersonal and dehumanizing. The better community-building conversations focus on possibilities, not problems. They are questions such as, What crossroads do we stand at right now? What can we build together? How can we improve our lives together? What talents do we have here that haven’t been fully expressed?
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David Brooks (The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life)
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By middle school, students have an image of themselves as readers or nonreaders. Students who do not read see reading as a talent that they do not have rather than as an attainable skill.
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Donalyn Miller (The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child)
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The nouveau riche flaunt their wealth, but the old rich scorn such gauche displays. Minor officials prove their status with petty displays of authority, while the truly powerful show their strength through gestures of magnanimity. People of average education show off the studied regularity of their script, but the well educated often scribble illegibly. Mediocre students answer a teacher’s easy questions, but the best students are embarrassed to prove their knowledge of trivial points. Acquaintances show their good intentions by politely ignoring one’s flaws, while close friends show intimacy by teasingly highlighting them. People of moderate ability seek formal credentials to impress employers and society, but the talented often downplay their credentials even if they have bothered to obtain them. A person of average reputation defensively refutes accusations against his character, while a highly respected person finds it demeaning to dignify accusations with a response.
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Avinash K. Dixit (The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life)
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Whenever an apprentice’s rising skills and talent exceeds the master’s aptitude and expertise, the understudy must move on because frequently it is too bruising for the eclipsed master’s ego to abide.
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
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During their lessons, Lorimer often reminded his student that his remarkable talent with the scalpel would amount to nothing if the knife was not held by a loving hand guided by a truth-seeking eye. The study of nature is a barren enterprise if stones, plants, and animals become frozen under the magnifying glass, Lorimer said. A naturalist should look at the world with warm affection, if not ardent love.
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Hernan Diaz (In the Distance)
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Technology and talent must come together to shape the future of our world. Thus, educators hold an essential role in the transformation of education. In addition, educators will need to encourage students to embrace new technologies and understand how they will be utilised in enterprises of the future. They will also have to prepare young students to utilize artificial intelligence in high-speed environments
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Siddhartha Paul Tiwari
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If you can deny your talents, if you can conceal them from others or, even better, persuade yourself that they weren’t even given to you, you’re off the hook.
And being off the hook is a key element of the industrialized school’s promise. It lets parents off the hook, certainly, since the institution takes over the teaching. It lets teachers off the hook, since the curriculum is preordained and the results are tested. And it lets students off the hook, because the road is clearly marked and the map is handed to everyone.
If you stay on the path, do your college applications through the guidance office and your job hunting at the placement office, the future is not your fault.
That’s the refrain we hear often from frustrated job seekers, frustrated workers with stuck careers, and frustrated students in too much debt. 'I did what they told me to do and now I’m stuck and it’s not my fault.'
What they’ve exchanged for that deniability is their dreams, their chance for greatness. To go off the path is to claim responsibility for what happens next.
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Seth Godin
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Jill was born into an inner-city home. Her father began having sex with Jill and her sister during their preschool years. Her mother was institutionalized twice because of what used to be termed “nervous breakdowns.” When Jill was 7 years old, her agitated dad called a family meeting in the living room. In front of the whole clan, he put a handgun to his head, said, “You drove me to this,” and then blew his brains out. The mother’s mental condition continued to deteriorate, and she revolved in and out of mental hospitals for years. When Mom was home, she would beat Jill. Beginning in her early teens, Jill was forced to work outside the home to help make ends meet. As Jill got older, we would have expected to see deep psychiatric scars, severe emotional damage, drugs, maybe even a pregnancy or two. Instead, Jill developed into a charming and quite popular young woman at school. She became a talented singer, an honor student, and president of her high-school class. By every measure, she was emotionally well-adjusted and seemingly unscathed by the awful circumstances of her childhood. Her story, published in a leading psychiatric journal, illustrates the unevenness of the human response to stress. Psychiatrists long have observed that some people are more tolerant of stress than others.
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John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
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Highly self-disciplined adolescents outperformed their more impulsive peers on every academic-performance variable,” the researchers wrote. “Self-discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did IQ. Self-discipline also predicted which students would improve their grades over the course of the school year, whereas IQ did not.… Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.
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Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How to Change)
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If you have a million fans and no talent,
you’re still not a success.
a million students and no lesson,
you’re still not a teacher.
a million sermons and no compassion,
you’re still not a priest.
a million children and no affection,
you’re still not a father.
a million anniversaries and no devotion,
you’re still not a husband.
If you have a million sheep and no courage,
you’re still not a shepherd.
a million seeds and no harvest,
you’re still not a farmer.
a million titles and no integrity,
you’re still not a champion.
a million thoughts and no insights,
you’re still not a philosopher.
a million predictions and no prophecy,
you’re still not a prophet.
If you have a million soldiers and no unity,
you’re still not an army.
a million monks and no camaraderie,
you’re still not a monastery.
a million cities and no borders,
you’re still not a country.
a million musicians and no harmony,
you’re still not an orchestra.
a million armies and no strategy,
you’re still not a general.
If you have a million titles, and no influence,
you’re still not a leader;
a million ideas and no creations,
you’re still not an artist.
a million theories, and no facts,
you’re still not a scholar;
a million books, and no wisdom,
you’re still not a sage;
a million virtues, and no love,
you’re still not a saint.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are in my opinion not philosophers; for they lack the first requirement of a philosopher, namely a seriousness and honesty of inquiry. They are merely sophists who wanted to appear to be rather than to be something. They sought not truth, but their own interest and advancement in the world. Appointments from governments, fees and royalties from students and publishers, and, as a means to this end, the greatest possible show and sensation in their sham philosophy-such were
the guiding stars and inspiring genii of those disciples of wisdom. And so they have not passed the entrance examination and cannot be admitted into the venerable company of thinkers for the human race.
Nevertheless they have excelled in one thing, in the art of beguiling the public and of passing themselves off for what they are not; and this undoubtedly requires talent, yet not philosophical.
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Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena)
“
The students who feel alienated by current systems of standardization and testing may walk out the door, and it’s left to them and others to pay the price in unemployment benefits and other social programs. These problems are not accidental by-products of standardized education; they are a structural feature of these systems. They were designed to process people according to particular conceptions of talent and economic need and were bound to produce winners and losers in just those terms. And they do. Many of these “externalities” could be avoided if education genuinely gave all students the same opportunities to explore their real capabilities and create their best lives.
”
”
Ken Robinson (Creative Schools: Revolutionizing Education from the Ground Up)
“
Educational bureaucracies dull a child’s questing sensitivity.” Odrade explaining. “The young must be damped down. Never let them know how good they can be. That brings change. Spend lots of committee time talking about how to deal with exceptional students. Don’t spend any time dealing with how the conventional teacher feels threatened by emerging talents and squelches them because of a deep-seated desire to feel superior and safe in a safe environment.
”
”
Frank Herbert (Chapterhouse: Dune (Dune Chronicles, #6))
“
If we are going to help our students thrive, we have to move past “the way we have always done it,” and create better learning experiences for our students than we had ourselves. This does not mean replacing everything we do, but we must being willing to look with fresh eyes at what we do and ask, “Is there a better way?” We would expect the same mindset from our students, and, as educators, that question is the first step on the path to a better future for education.
”
”
George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
“
Education is the system that’s supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world. Instead, it is stifling the individual talents and abilities of too many students and killing their motivation to learn.
”
”
Kenneth Robinson
“
When life hands you questions, answer them.
When life hands you mysteries, unravel them.
When life hands you enigmas, decipher them.
When life hands you tasks, accomplish them.
When life hands you problems, tackle them.
When life hands you skills, develop them.
When life hands you talents, sharpen them.
When life hands you friends, cherish them.
When life hands you family, value them.
When life hands you acquaintances, treasure them.
When life hands you opponents, confront them.
When life hands you acquaintances, celebrate them.
When life hands you allies, support them.
When life hands you riches, multiply them.
When life hands you possessions, protect them.
When life hands you pleasures, ration them.
When life hands you experiences, relish them.
When life hands you students, instruct them.
When life hands you mentors, study them.
When life hands you teachers, esteem them.
When life hands you disciples, inspire them.
When life hands you gurus, honor them.
When life hands you lessons, remember them.
When life hands you teachings, impart them.
When life hands you demands, tackle them.
When life hands you obstacles, challenge them.
When life hands you troubles, overcome them.
When life hands you burdens, conquer them.
When life hands you titles, cherish them.
When life hands you degrees, employ them.
When life hands you medals, welcome them.
When life hands you awards, appreciate them.
When life hands you blessings, count them.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
I was a loner but never lonely and was an excellent student. I buried myself in my books. I showed a real talent for working with numbers. I loved numbers. I still love numbers. I love how they never lie. They always fit. There is always a constant.
”
”
Beth Flynn (Nine Minutes (Nine Minutes, #1))
“
For academically talented women, in contrast, school success does not guarantee occupational success. Even the best female college students need people who will support them, encourage them, and – most important—who will connect them to opportunities.
”
”
Karen Arnold (Lives of Promise: What Becomes of High School Valedictorians: A Fourteen-year Study of Achievement and Life Choices (Jossey Bass Social and Behavioral Science Series))
“
Since Madam Conk makes impermissible use of such things as the happenings at Azuma Bridge; since she hires underlings to spy and eavesdrop on us; since she triumphantly retails to all and sundry the products of her espionage; since by the employment of rickshaw-folk, mere grooms, plain rogues, student riff-raff, crone daily-help, midwives, witches, masseurs, and other trouble-makers she seeks to trouble a man of talent; for all these reasons even a cat must do what can be done to prevent her getting away with it.
”
”
Natsume Sōseki (I Am A Cat (Tuttle Classics))
“
Carlos Vignolo, a masterful professor at the University of Chile, told me that he provocatively suggests that students take classes from the worst teachers in their school because this will prepare them for life, where they won’t have talented educators leading the way.
”
”
Tina Seelig (What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20)
“
When I first read The Rebel, this splendid line came leaping from the page like a dolphin from a wave. I memorized it instantly, and from then on Camus was my man. I wanted to write like that, in a prose that sang like poetry. I wanted to look like him. I wanted to wear a Bogart-style trench coat with the collar turned up, have an untipped Gauloise dangling from my lower lip, and die romantically in a car crash. At the time, the crash had only just happened. The wheels of the wrecked Facel Vega were practically still spinning, and at Sydney University I knew exiled French students, spiritually scarred by service in Indochina, who had met Camus in Paris: one of them claimed to have shared a girl with him. Later on, in London, I was able to arrange the trench coat and the Gauloise, although I decided to forgo the car crash until a more propitious moment. Much later, long after having realized that smoking French cigarettes was just an expensive way of inhaling nationalized industrial waste, I learned from Olivier Todd's excellent biography of Camus that the trench coat had been a gift from Arthur Koestler's wife and that the Bogart connection had been, as the academics say, no accident. Camus had wanted to look like Bogart, and Mrs. Koestler knew where to get the kit. Camus was a bit of an actor--he though, in fact, that he was a lot of an actor, although his histrionic talent was the weakest item of his theatrical equipment--and, being a bit of an actor, he was preoccupied by questions of authenticity, as truly authentic people seldom are. But under the posturing agonies about authenticity there was something better than authentic: there was something genuine. He was genuinely poetic. Being that, he could apply two tests simultaneously to his own language: the test of expressiveness, and the test of truth to life. To put it another way, he couldn't not apply them.
”
”
Clive James (Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts)
“
Higher education, in contrast, did not always keep its promise to develop the talents of even its best students. Left with classroom achievement alone, many students never found a negotiable path to a clearly envisioned career corresponding to their deepest interests and values.
”
”
Karen Arnold (Lives of Promise: What Becomes of High School Valedictorians: A Fourteen-year Study of Achievement and Life Choices (Jossey Bass Social and Behavioral Science Series))
“
one of the saddest things in life is to die with the music still inside us. There’s tremendous talent in Peter that has been long denied. When I knew him, he was one of the most promising artists in college. His work was praised by staff and students alike. His potential was breathtaking.
”
”
Debbie Macomber (If Not for You)
“
Competition perverts true fitness, Hébert believed. It tempts you to cheat; to overdevelop some talents while ignoring others; to keep tips for yourself that could be useful to everyone. It’s a short cut; all you have to do is beat the other guy and you’re done, but the Natural Method is a never-ending challenge for self-improvement. Besides, competitive sports focus on rivalry and class divisions. The Natural Method was all about collaboration; every teacher was a student, every student was a teacher, bringing fresh ideas and new challenges. Raise the bar, but help the next guy over it
”
”
Christopher McDougall (Natural Born Heroes: Mastering the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance)
“
Asbjørn had a nose, that was his great talent, I had never met anyone with such sureness of taste as him, but what use was it, part from being the hub student life revolved around? The essence of a nose is judgment, to judge you have to stand outside, and that is not where creativity takes place.
”
”
Karl Ove Knausgård (My Struggle: Book 1)
“
A wonderful ferment was working in Germany. Life seemed more free, more modern, more exciting than in any place I had ever seen. Nowhere else did the arts or the intellectual life seem so lively. In contemporary writing, painting, architecture, in music and drama, there were new currents and fine talents. And everywhere there was an accent on youth. One sat up with the young people all night in the sidewalk cafés, the plush bars, the summer camps, on a Rhineland steamer or in a smoke-filled artist’s studio and talked endlessly about life. They were a healthy, carefree, sun-worshiping lot, and they were filled with an enormous zest for living to the full and in complete freedom. The old oppressive Prussian spirit seemed to be dead and buried. Most Germans one met—politicians, writers, editors, artists, professors, students, businessmen, labor leaders—struck you as being democratic, liberal, even pacifist.
”
”
William L. Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany)
“
School leaders need to stop creating schools that attempt to lock in prior achievement and experiences (such as by using tracking), and instead be evidence-informed about the talents and growth of all students by welcoming diversity and being accountable for all (regardless of the teachers’ and schools’ expectations).
”
”
John Hattie (Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning)
“
As leaders, if we ask teachers to use their own time to do anything, what we’re really telling them is: it’s not important. The focus on compliance and implementation of programs in much of today’s professional development does not inspire teachers to be creative, nor does it foster a culture of innovation. Instead, it forces inspired educators to color outside the lines, and even break the rules, to create relevant opportunities for their students. These outliers form pockets of innovation. Their results surprise us. Their students remember them as “great teachers,” not because of the test scores they received but because their lives were touched.
”
”
George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
“
Teaching students by example to be self-starters and to continuously evaluate how they might improve their education helps them learn how to effectively learn. When we stop simply telling students how to learn, and, rather, act as a “guide on the side,” we can support them in a way that encourages them to find their own solutions.
”
”
George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
“
Patrick West.” Nick spoke so quietly the words were hardly more than a soft exhalation. “Student. Swimmer. Fan of lurid supernatural romances, €linore, and BadMadRad. Casual gamer. Admirer of Jaguar, fictional warrior princesses, and soprano witch queens. Lover of historical buildings. Idealist who wants to build cities where people can live well. Owner of strong opinions he never hesitates to defend, no matter how obviously wrong. Quick to laugh. Spontaneous and unselfconscious, except when he thinks too much, or tries too hard. Talks too much, with hardly any filter between the brain and the mouth. Adaptable. Outgoing. Unreserved. Loud. Talented. Whole-hearted. Foolhardy. Stronger than he thinks. Wiser than he seems.
”
”
Alex Gabriel (Love for the Cold-Blooded, or The Part-Time Evil Minion's Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero)
“
We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective of individual talents and preferences. Students who don’t learn best by sitting still at a desk are made to feel somehow inferior, while children who excel on conventional measures like tests and assignments end up defining their identities in terms of this weirdly contrived academic parallel reality.
”
”
Anonymous
“
John's particular talents hadn't gone unnoticed but they weren't his artistic talents. They were his talents for having his fellow students fall about with shocked, uncontrollable laughter at his wicked, disrespectful wit. His ability to disrupt a lecture had to be seen to be believed and John's appearance was even worse than his humour. I think he was the last stronghold of the Teddy Boys - totally aggressive and anti-establishment. My first impression of John, as he slouched reluctantly into the lettering class for the first time, was one of apprehension. I felt that I had nothing in common with this individual and as far as I was concerned I never would. In fact he frightened me to death. The only thing that John and I had in common was that we were both blind as bats without our glasses.
”
”
Cynthia Lennon (A Twist Of Lennon)
“
Before you are a champion you are an amateur.
Before you are a general you are a warrior.
Before you are a politician you are a constituent.
Before you are a president you are a citizen.
Before you are a pastor you are a parishioner.
Before you are a pope you are a priest.
Before you are a teacher you are a student.
Before you are a guru you are a disciple.
Before you are an inventor you are a scientist.
Before you are a judge you are a lawyer.
Before you are a maestro you are an apprentice.
Before you are a coach you are an athlete.
Before you are a genius you are a talent.
A humble amateur is better than a proud champion.
A humble warrior is better than a proud general.
A humble constituent is better than a proud politician.
A humble citizen is better than a proud president.
A humble parishioner is better than a proud pastor.
A humble priest is better than a proud pope.
A humble student is better than a proud teacher.
A humble disciple is better than a proud guru.
A humble scientist is better than a proud inventor.
A humble lawyer is better than a proud judge.
A humble apprentice is better than a proud expert.
A humble athlete is better than a proud coach.
A humble talent is better than a proud genius.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
My school teacher of language and literature always admired with my writing, treating me as one of his most favorite students. He gave me the different vision of myself. Being the person of unique talents, charisma, great wisdom, and intelligence, the teacher was that “beam of sunshine in the blackness,” so invaluable that it wouldn’t be possible for me to survive without his inspiring, kind, and cheering, caring words.
”
”
Sahara Sanders (Gods’ Food (Indigo Diaries, #1))
“
ou must make friends with at least one student from the year above you. This is so that you learn the secrets of how to pass exams. You can learn about the grading methods of the teachers in this way. In addition, find one classmate of the same year who is very talented and become best friends with him. Have him lend his notebook to you, and during exams, have him sit right next to you. Those two are all you need for school friends.
”
”
Osamu Dazai (A New Hamlet)
“
When he was in college, a famous poet made a useful distinction for him. He had drunk enough in the poet's company to be compelled to describe to him a poem he was thinking of. It would be a monologue of sorts, the self-contemplation of a student on a summer afternoon who is reading Euphues. The poem itself would be a subtle series of euphuisms, translating the heat, the day, the student's concerns, into symmetrical posies; translating even his contempt and boredom with that famously foolish book into a euphuism.
The poet nodded his big head in a sympathetic, rhythmic way as this was explained to him, then told him that there are two kinds of poems. There is the kind you write; there is the kind you talk about in bars. Both kinds have value and both are poems; but it's fatal to confuse them.
In the Seventh Saint, many years later, it had struck him that the difference between himself and Shakespeare wasn't talent - not especially - but nerve. The capacity not to be frightened by his largest and most potent conceptions, to simply (simply!) sit down and execute them. The dreadful lassitude he felt when something really large and multifarious came suddenly clear to him, something Lear-sized yet sonnet-precise. If only they didn't rush on him whole, all at once, massive and perfect, leaving him frightened and nerveless at the prospect of articulating them word by scene by page. He would try to believe they were of the kind told in bars, not the kind to be written, though there was no way to be sure of this except to attempt the writing; he would raise a finger (the novelist in the bar mirror raising the obverse finger) and push forward his change. Wailing like a neglected ghost, the vast notion would beat its wings into the void.
Sometimes it would pursue him for days and years as he fled desperately. Sometimes he would turn to face it, and do battle. Once, twice, he had been victorious, objectively at least. Out of an immense concatenation of feeling, thought, word, transcendent meaning had come his first novel, a slim, pageant of a book, tombstone for his slain conception. A publisher had taken it, gingerly; had slipped it quietly into the deep pool of spring releases, where it sank without a ripple, and where he supposes it lies still, its calm Bodoni gone long since green. A second, just as slim but more lurid, nightmarish even, about imaginary murders in an imaginary exotic locale, had been sold for a movie, though the movie had never been made. He felt guilt for the producer's failure (which perhaps the producer didn't feel), having known the book could not be filmed; he had made a large sum, enough to finance years of this kind of thing, on a book whose first printing was largely returned.
”
”
John Crowley (Novelty: Four Stories)
“
I have found a church in art, a form of work that is also a form of worship—it is a means of understanding myself, all my past selves, and all of you as beloved. This is why I will never stop doing it, even if no publisher ever again wants to share the results. Ironically, this kind of investment in the process is a boon to those who seek publication. Tenacity is often cited as the most common characteristic of successful authors. Of the many talented people I’ve met—classmates, students, friends—many of them no longer write.18 The ones who have kept doing so have made it central to their lives both external and internal. Writing is hard. It is not the most apparently useful kind of work to do in the world. Most of us are not out here saving any lives but our own, though its power to do that (at least in my case) is uncontestable. The older I get, the less convinced I am about most things, but this is one of the great facts of my life.
”
”
Melissa Febos (Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative)
“
Above all, he encourages her to paint, nodding with approval at even her most unusual experiments with color, light, rough brushwork [...]. She explains to him that she believes painting should reflect nature and life [...]. He nods, although he adds cautiously that he wouldn't want her to know too much about life - nature is a fine subject, but life is grimmer than she can understand. He thinks it is good for her to have something satisfying to do at home; he loves art himself; he sees her gift and wants her to be happy. He knows the charming Morisots. He has met the Manets, and always remarks that they are a good family, despite Édouard's reputation and his immoral experiments (he paints loose women), which make him perhaps too modern - a shame, given his obvious talent.
In fact, Yves takes her to many galleries. They attend the Salon every year, with nearly a million other people, and listen to the gossip about favorite canvases and those critics disdain. Occasionally they stroll in the museums in the Louvre, where she sees art students copying paintings and sculpture, even an unchaperoned woman here and there (surely Americans). She can't quite bring herself to admire nudes in his presence, certainly not the heroic males; she knows she will never paint from a nude model herself. Her own formal training was in the private studios of an academican, copying from plaster casts with her mother present, before she married.
”
”
Elizabeth Kostova (The Swan Thieves)
“
A person will always find someone with more talent and more knowledge. Ultimately, “Above all those who have knowledge is the All-Knowing” (QUR’AN , 12:76), God. Moses was once asked if he was the most knowledgeable of people, and he answered “Yes.” Moses was then told that there was a man who had knowledge that Moses did not have. This man was Khiḍr , who was not a prophet, but Moses , without a trace of vanity, became his student. (The story is told in Sura al-Kahf of the Qur’an.)
”
”
Hamza Yusuf (Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart)
“
Until COVID, I thought that free speech was a protected fundamental right guaranteed to all citizens of the United States of America by the Bill of Rights. Having been assigned core texts like 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, and The Trial and Death of Socrates in fourth and fifth grade as a “gifted and talented” student in the California school system of the time, I believed there was no way anything like what was written in those books could happen here in the USA during the 21st century.
”
”
Robert W. Malone (Lies My Gov't Told Me: And the Better Future Coming)
“
A shark does not ask for permission to rule the waters.
A bear does not ask for permission to rule the woods.
A wolf does not ask for permission to rule the forest.
A camel does not ask for permission to rule the desert.
A lion does not ask for permission to rule the jungle.
Trees do not ask for permission to rule woodlands.
Gravel does not ask for permission to rule mountains.
Light does not ask for permission to rule summer.
Wind does not ask for permission to rule autumn.
Snow does not ask for permission to rule winter.
Water does not ask for permission to rule the sea.
Plants do not ask for permission to rule rainforests.
Animals do not ask for permission to rule wildernesses.
Stars do not ask for permission to rule the sky.
Nature does not ask for permission to rule the world.
An eagle achieves more than a turkey in a lifetime.
A leopard achieves more than a hyena in a lifetime.
A fox achieves more than a rabbit in a lifetime.
A falcon achieves more than a vulture in a lifetime.
A lion achieves more than a sheep in a lifetime.
A leader achieves more than a student in a lifetime.
A saint achieves more than a sinner in a lifetime.
A prophet achieves more than a priest in a lifetime.
A master achieves more than a disciple in a lifetime.
A conqueror achieves more than a warrior in a lifetime.
A hero achieves more than a villain in a lifetime.
A maestro achieves more than an apprentice in a lifetime.
A genius achieves more than a talent in a lifetime.
A star achieves more than a critic in a lifetime.
A legend achieves more than a champion in a lifetime.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
The wu-forms that we find throughout the text all advocate a personal disposition that seeks to optimize relationships through collaborative actions that, in the absence of coercion, enable one to make the most of any situation. It is the uniqueness of each situation that requires any generalization about this optimal disposition to be stated in negative terms. A voice coach can describe the constraints that students in general might have to overcome in achieving the fullness of their talent, but all of the students must sing their own unique songs.
”
”
Lao Tzu (Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation)
“
As for the world beyond my family—well, what they would see for most of my teenage years was not a budding leader but rather a lackadaisical student, a passionate basketball player of limited talent, and an incessant, dedicated partyer. No student government for me; no Eagle Scouts or interning at the local congressman’s office. Through high school, my friends and I didn’t discuss much beyond sports, girls, music, and plans for getting loaded. Three of these guys—Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme, and Mike Ramos—remain some of my closest friends. To this day, we can laugh for hours over stories of our misspent youth. In later years, they would throw themselves into my campaigns with a loyalty for which I will always be grateful, becoming as skilled at defending my record as anyone on MSNBC. But there were also times during my presidency—after they had watched me speak to a big crowd, say, or receive a series of crisp salutes from young Marines during a base tour—when their faces would betray a certain bafflement, as if they were trying to reconcile the graying man in a suit and tie with the ill-defined man-child they’d once known. That guy? they must have said to themselves. How the hell did that happen? And if my friends had ever asked me directly, I’m not sure I’d have had a good answer.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
By failing to make the obvious connection between an openly misogynistic culture and the mysterious lack of women, Levy contributed to the myth of innately talented hackers being implicitly male. And, today, it’s hard to think of a profession more in thrall to brilliance bias than computer science. ‘Where are the girls that love to program?’ asked a high-school teacher who took part in a summer programme for advanced-placement computer-science teachers at Carnegie Mellon; ‘I have any number of boys who really really love computers,’ he mused. ‘Several parents have told me their sons would be on the computer programming all night if they could. I have yet to run into a girl like that.’
This may be true, but as one of his fellow teachers pointed out, failing to exhibit this behaviour doesn’t mean that his female students don’t love computer science. Recalling her own student experience, she explained how she ‘fell in love’ with programming when she took her first course in college. But she didn’t stay up all night, or even spend a majority of her time programming. ‘Staying up all night doing something is a sign of single-mindedness and possibly immaturity as well as love for the subject. The girls may show their love for computers and computer science very differently. If you are looking for this type of obsessive behavior, then you are looking for a typically young, male behavior. While some girls will exhibit it, most won’t.
”
”
Caroline Criado Pérez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)
“
The highest knowledge is still no match for the lowest wisdom.
The highest fame is still no match for the lowest influence.
The highest weakness is still no match for the lowest strength.
The highest loss is still no match for the lowest win.
The highest opinion is still no match for the lowest fact.
The highest immitation is still no match for the lowest original.
The highest pleasure is still no match for the lowest purpose.
The highest talent is still no match for the lowest genius.
The highest theory is still no match for the lowest proof.
The highest want is still no match for the lowest need.
The highest mind is still no match for the lowest soul.
The highest technology is still no match for the lowest miracle.
The highest darkness is still no match for the lowest light.
The highest devil is still no match for the lowest angel.
The highest vice is still no match for the lowest virtue.
The highest Hell is still no match for the lowest Heaven.
The highest priest is still no match for the lowest prophet.
The highest scholar is still no match for the lowest sage.
The highest warrior is still no match for the lowest conqueror.
The highest lawyer is still no match for the lowest judge.
The highest politician is still no match for the lowest activist.
The highest follower is still no match for the lowest leader.
The highest student is still no match for the lowest teacher.
The highest disciple is still no match for the lowest master.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation. In their positive form, they become diplomats. Talking outside the glass when someone else blunders helps to change the subject. But fools don’t interest us, either. They’re never creative, their talent is all secondhand, so they don’t submit manuscripts to publishers. Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent. It’s a dying breed, the embodiment of all the bourgeois virtues. What they really need is a Verdurin salon or even a chez Guer-mantes. Do you students still read such things?
”
”
Umberto Eco (Foucault's Pendulum)
“
...a scientist called James Morningdale, quite talented in his way. He carried on his work in a remote part of Scotland, where I suppose
he thought he'd attract less attention. What he wanted was to offer people the possibility of having children with enhanced characteristics. Superior intelligence, superior athleticism, that sort of thing...As I say, it never became an enormous matter. But it did
create a certain atmosphere, you see. It reminded people, reminded them of a fear they'd always had. It's one thing to
create students, such as yourselves, for the donation programme. But a generation of created children who'd take their place in
society? Children demonstrably superior to the rest of us? Oh no. That frightened people. They recoiled from that.
”
”
Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go)
“
I have both some good news and some bad news for you: there is little that is unique or special about your problems. That’s why letting go is so liberating. There’s a kind of self-absorption that comes with fear based on an irrational certainty. When you assume that your plane is the one that’s going to crash, or that your project idea is the stupid one everyone is going to laugh at, or that you’re the one everyone is going to choose to mock or ignore, you’re implicitly telling yourself, “I’m the exception; I’m unlike everybody else; I’m different and special.” This is narcissism, pure and simple. You feel as though your problems deserve to be treated differently, that your problems have some unique math to them that doesn’t obey the laws of the physical universe. My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator. The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible. This often means giving up some grandiose ideas about yourself: that you’re uniquely intelligent, or spectacularly talented, or intimidatingly attractive, or especially victimized in ways other people could never imagine. This means giving up your sense of entitlement and your belief that you’re somehow owed something by this world. This means giving up the supply of emotional highs that you’ve been sustaining yourself on for years. Like a junkie giving up the needle, you’re going to go through withdrawal when you start giving these things up. But you’ll come out the other side so much better.
”
”
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
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When Benjamin Bloom studied his 120 world-class concert pianists, sculptors, swimmers, tennis players, mathematicians, and research neurologists, he found something fascinating. For most of them, their first teachers were incredibly warm and accepting. Not that they set low standards. Not at all, but they created an atmosphere of trust, not judgment. It was, “I’m going to teach you,” not “I’m going to judge your talent.” As you look at what Collins and Esquith demanded of their students—all their students—it’s almost shocking. When Collins expanded her school to include young children, she required that every four-year-old who started in September be reading by Christmas. And they all were. The three- and four-year-olds used a vocabulary book titled Vocabulary for the High School Student. The seven-year-olds were reading The Wall Street Journal. For older children, a discussion of Plato’s Republic led to discussions of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Orwell’s Animal Farm, Machiavelli, and the Chicago city council. Her reading list for the late-grade-school children included The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov, Physics Through Experiment, and The Canterbury Tales. Oh, and always Shakespeare. Even the boys who picked their teeth with switchblades, she says, loved Shakespeare and always begged for more. Yet Collins maintained an extremely nurturing atmosphere. A very strict and disciplined one, but a loving one. Realizing that her students were coming from teachers who made a career of telling them what was wrong with them, she quickly made known her complete commitment to them as her students and as people. Esquith bemoans the lowering of standards. Recently, he tells us, his school celebrated reading scores that were twenty points below the national average. Why? Because they were a point or two higher than the year before. “Maybe it’s important to look for the good and be optimistic,” he says, “but delusion is not the answer. Those who celebrate failure will not be around to help today’s students celebrate their jobs flipping burgers.… Someone has to tell children if they are behind, and lay out a plan of attack to help them catch up.” All of his fifth graders master a reading list that includes Of Mice and Men, Native Son, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, The Joy Luck Club, The Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Separate Peace. Every one of his sixth graders passes an algebra final that would reduce most eighth and ninth graders to tears. But again, all is achieved in an atmosphere of affection and deep personal commitment to every student. “Challenge and nurture” describes DeLay’s approach, too. One of her former students expresses it this way: “That is part of Miss DeLay’s genius—to put people in the frame of mind where they can do their best.… Very few teachers can actually get you to your ultimate potential. Miss DeLay has that gift. She challenges you at the same time that you feel you are being nurtured.
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Carol S. Dweck (Mindset: The New Psychology of Success)
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Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to your new home.’ He gestured to the stone walls of the cavern that surrounded them. ‘Your lives as you once knew them are over,’ he continued. ‘You have been selected, all of you, the worst, the most cunning, the most mischievous minds from around the world . . . selected to become part of an institution like no other. You have all exhibited certain unique abilities, abilities that set you apart from the mediocrity of the teeming masses and which mark you out as the leaders of tomorrow. Here, in this place, you will be furnished with the knowledge and experience to best exploit your own natural abilities, to hone your craft to a cutting edge.’
He paused and slowly surveyed the pale, wide-eyed faces before him.
‘Each of you has within you a rare quality, a gift if you will, a special talent for the supremely villainous. Society would have us believe that this is an undesirable characteristic, something that should be subdued, controlled, destroyed. But not here . . . no, here we want to see you blossom into all that you can be, to see your innate wickedness flourish, to make you the very worst that you can be.’
He stepped out from behind the lectern and walked to the edge of the raised platform. As he loomed over them he seemed to grow taller and some of those at the front of the group edged backwards nervously.
‘For today all of you have the unique honour and privilege of becoming the newest students of the world’s first and only school of applied villainy.’ He spread his arms, gesturing to the walls around them. ‘Welcome to H.I.V.E., the Higher Institute of Villainous Education.
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Mark Walden (H.I.V.E. Higher Institute of Villainous Education (H.I.V.E., #1))
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The Times
Exclusive Reveal of Windermere Six
Thanks to an anonymous source, the Times is pleased to share an exclusive list of the six children who were transported yesterday evening to Hollingsworth Hall, the magnificent and secluded home of Camilla Lenore DeMoss, the Countess of Windermere. They are, in no particular order:
Oliver Appleby: Heir to the Appleby Jewelry fortune. This young chap is known to be an excellent student who also excels at rowing and cricket.
Viola Dale: The Dales are well known throughout London for their dedication to social reform and relief for those in distress. Young Viola has been a presence on the charitable event circuit since the age of two.
Frances Wellington: Miss Wellington's parents are internationally known art collectors who have an impeccable eye for up-and-coming talent in sculpture and painting. They also delve into gems of historical value. Frances is privately tutored, and her deliciously expensive introduction to London society is already being buzzed about.
Barnaby Trundle: Young Barnaby attends school in South London. His father works in the textile industry. One of his teachers says Barnaby is "occasionally quick-tempered with other boys in his form."
Edward Herringbone: The Herringbones are close acquaintances with the aforementioned Dales, their own admirable interests lying mainly in reducing poverty by increasing educational opportunities. Edward has been called "an indubitable library of a boy" by one of his teaching masters at St. Stephen's.
Tabitha Crum: Miss Crum's father is employed by the Wilting Bank of South London. A neighbor of the family says that the lucky child "talks to herself" and calls the Crums "socially famished.
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Jessica Lawson (Nooks & Crannies)