Ted Sizer Quotes

The first object of any act of learning, over and beyond the pleasure it may give, is that it should serve us in the future. Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily.

Inspiration, hunger: these are the qualities that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is to create the most likely conditions for them to flourish, and then get out of their way.

You can't motivate a student you don't know.

A good education teaches you how to ask a question. It’s knowing what you don’t know; the skills of critical thought.

Every student, without exception, should be able to succeed well at something consequential.

Things remain the same because it is impossible to change very much without changing most of everything.

I cannot teach a child I do not know

In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine.

Writing is the litmus paper of thoughtthe very center of schooling.

The schools schedule is a series of units of time; the clock is king.

... the kids do what no one expects them to do. That's progress.