Unschooling Quotes

                      Almond Blossoms (1890) by Vincent Van Gogh


Here are some wonderful quotes from both famous and lesser-known men and women, who recognized the value of unschooling and natural learning.

All I am saying in this book can be summed up in two words:  Trust Children.  Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult.  Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.

~ John Holt, in "How Children Learn"

"Children don’t need to be taught how to learn; they are born learners. They come out of the womb interacting with and exploring their surroundings. Babies are active learners, their burning curiosity motivating them to learn how the world works. And if they are given a safe, supportive environment, they will continue to learn hungrily and naturally – in the manner and at the speed that suits them best."

~  Wendy Priesnitz

I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for one’s self.

~  George Washington Carver

“We learn because we want to learn, because it’s important to us, because it’s natural, and because it’s impossible to live in the world and not learn. Then along comes school to mess up a beautiful thing.”

~  Peggy Pirro

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.  

~  Plutarch

Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.   

~  William Butler Yeats 

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.  

~  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron." 

~  Horace Mann

"Childhood has it's own way of seeing, thinking, and feeling, and nothing is more foolish than to try to substitute ours for theirs."

~  Jean Jacques Rousseau 

“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”

~  Rachel Carson

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.   

~   Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction."

~   Anne Sullivan

 

"Children need models rather than critics."

~   Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), French Philosopher

When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments; tenderness for what he is,
and respect for what he may become.

~    Louis Pasteur 

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

~  Frederick Douglass

It is easier for a teacher to command than to teach." 

~  John Locke

"It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated."

~  Alec Bourne

Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

~  Albert Einstein

"It is absurd and anti-life to be a part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry."

~  John Taylor Gatto

"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind." 

~  Plato

"During the school day, there should be extended time for play. Research has shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the material or activity they are learning. Play — from building contraptions to enacting stories to inventing games — can allow children to satisfy their curiosity about the things that interest them in their own way. It can also help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, like generating testable hypotheses, imagining situations from someone else’s perspective and thinking of alternate solutions."

~  Susan Engel

"There can be no education without leisure; and without leisure, education is worthless."

~  Sarah Josepha Hale 

“Because schools suffocate children’s hunger to learn, learning appears to be difficult and we assume that children must be externally motivated to do it.”

~  Wendy Priesnitz

   

My education was interrupted only by my schooling.

~  Winston Churchill

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." 

~  George Santayana

"We're drowning in information and starving for knowledge." 

~  Rutherford Rogers

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." 

~  Albert Einstein 

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

~  Mark Twain


"Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned." 

~  Mark Twain

“Where is the wisdom lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge lost in information?”

~  T. S. Eliot

"I can't give you a brain, but I can give you a diploma." 

~  L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz

“Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.”

~  John Updike

“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch out of a free, meandering brook.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

“Artificial learning takes what is simple and natural and turns it into a complex array of objectives, goals, measurements, administrators, supervisors, counselors, and transportation experts. Natural education requires only a guide providing direction, and a learner ready to discover and create goals and values that are personally meaningful.”

~  Linda Dobson

“My job is not to teach at all, but to find the opportunities for my kids to learn. NOT knowing something can be an advantage, as it reminds me of the wealth of resources out there in the community and world, if only we are willing to go look for them.”

~  David Albert

When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

~  Eleanor Roosevelt

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

~  Samuel Johnson

I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun.

~  Thomas A. Edison

Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.

~  Winston Churchill

As a child lives today, he will live tomorrow.

~  John Dewey

Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.

~  John Dewey

“Education is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.” 

~  John Dewey

Unschooling doesn't mean not learning - it means learning without the trappings of school. It is not unlearning or uneducating. Its only unschooling - it points out a contrast in approaches to learning. My unschooled kids are learning as much or more than their schooled friends. 

~  Pam Sorooshian

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero


Which quote resonated with you the most?