MISCELLANY
EndNotes
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because, it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
— Robert Frost
___
___
The first idea that the child must acquire, in order
to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and
evil, and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does
not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity.
— Maria Montessori
___
___
Education off-cuts ...
To provide choices and opportunities that allow
children to develop at their own pace and to follow their own interests.
Summerhill does not aim to produce specific types of young people, with
specific, assessed skills or knowledge, but aims to provide an
environment in which children can define who they are and what they want
to be.
— from a Summerhill Policy Statement
Look at who we, the Summerhillians, have become: we are
artists, writers, professors, scientists, soldiers, administrators,
theologians, bankers, musicians, carpenters, landscape architects, small
business owners. We hold BAs, MAs, and PhDs. We vote. We are precisely
the ‘useful’ people their curricula is designed to produce! And we are
happy and productive to boot.
— Martha, a former Summerhill pupil
...
A university professor set an examination question in
which he asked what is the difference between ignorance and apathy. The
professor had to give an A+ to a student who answered: “I
don't know and I don't care.”
— Richard Pratt
...
"In large states public education will always be
mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is
usually bad."
— Friedrich Nietzsche
___
