I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.
I'd teach less about the love of power,
And more about the power of love.
By Diane Loomans
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YKK Quotes on Nurturing Creativity in Children
Artists
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist after
growing up. ” Pablo Picasso
Boredom
“Boredom will always remain the greatest enemy of school discipline. If
we remember that children are bored, not only when they don't happen to
be interested in the subject or when the teacher doesn't make it
interesting, but also when certain working conditions are out of focus with
their basic needs, then we can realize what a great contributor to
discipline problems boredom really is. Research has shown that boredom
is closely related to frustration and that the effect of too much frustration
is invariably irritability, withdrawal, rebellious opposition or aggressive
rejection of the whole show. ” Fritz Redl
Brain
“If the right brain abilities are developed between the ages of zero to six,
they will be with a child for life. As such, pulling out the brain’s natural
abilities should take priority over others, so that the child need not suffer
at all in learning anything in the future. ” Makato Shichida
Breast-feeding
“The more you breast-feed, the smarter your kid will become. The brains
of kids who have been breast-fed are more optimally developed than
those of kids who haven't been breast-fed. Not only would the mother be
providing the benefit of breast milk, she would provide a biological link
with the child that would be very satisfying for both mother and child. ”
June Machover Reinisch
“The longer the child is breastfed, up to study limits of 24 months, the
greater their IQ scores and school performance. The human child's brain is
growing most rapidly during the first two years of life. Since we know that
some of the ingredients in breast-milk are critical to brain growth and
development, the results are not surprising. ” Katherine Dettwyler
Childhood
“Childhood is a land of great promise, a place where you should find
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something round and homelike, a place where there is room for a sense of
closeness and the cultivation of corresponding needs. ” Ernst Bloch
Community
“Parents, community groups and business leaders must be engaged in
developing curricula, discussing student and community needs,
supplementing limited resources and finding solutions to school problems
like drop-out rates and absenteeism. ” Jonny Gevisser
Computers
“There is no good evidence that most uses of computers significantly
improve teaching and learning, yet school districts are cutting programs --
music, art, physical education -- that enrich children's lives to make room
for this dubious nostrum. ” Todd Oppenheimer
“Children with access to the computer and the Internet learn, work, think,
shop and create in ways different from those of their parents. The
Computer and the Internet are the playground of these children – a land
of new unlimited possibilities and opportunities. ” Don Tapscott
Creativity
“To give a fair chance to potential creativity is a matter of life and death
to any society. ” Arnold Toynbee
“We need creativity to understand the world for creativity is part of the
learning process. ” Ingrid P Samuelson
“Creativity can be used to stimulate the aesthetic and emotional
dimensions of learning as a counterpoint to cognitive learning. ” Florence Beetlestone
“Non-creative behaviour is learned. ” George Land
“Creativity is more of a dull glow than a divine spark- the more fanning it
receives, the brighter it will burn. ” James Adams
“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human
creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To him... a touch is a
blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a
friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.”
“Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to
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create, create, create--so that without the creating of music or poetry or
books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off
from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange,
unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating. ”
Pearl S. Buck
“Creativity should be considered a common goal for all individuals rather
than a unique trait of the genius. ” David Henry Feldman
“When teachers or parents fail to understand highly creative individuals,
refusal to learn or withdrawal may be a consequence. The highly creative
person has an unusually strong urge to explore and to create. When he or
she thinks up ideas, or tests them and modifies them, he or she has an
unusually strong desire to communicate these ideas and to tell others
what they have discovered. Yet both peers and teachers named some of
the most creative students in our studies as ones who do not speak out
their ideas; there is little wonder they are reluctant to communicate their
ideas. Frequently, their ideas are so far ahead of those of their classmates
and even their teachers that they have given up hopes of
communicating. ” E. Paul Torrance
“Creativity includes drawing and painting, but it is more than just art.
Creativity includes having fun and playing, but it is more than just fun and
games. Creativity provides an exciting way for children to become
intrinsically motivated, to find joy in the ordinary, and to discover their
hidden talents. All children possess creativity. ” Steve Dahlberg
Education
“Education is that which remains after one has forgotten everything he
learned in school. ” Albert Einstein
“What the educational experience almost completely excludes is the
exercise and development of the students’ creativity. ” Ray Boltz & Robert Dean
“It is vital that the emotional needs of these complex, sensitive,
independent children be integrated into the educational process. ” Marie Friedel
“No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and
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generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education
should be to unlock that treasure. ” Emma Goldman
“Alas, how much is in our education and in our social institutions to
prepare us and our children for insanity. ” Goethe
“Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that
by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much
they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it. ” Sir William Haley
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. ” Mark Twain
“The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing
new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done -
men who are creative, inventive and discoverers. ” Jean Piaget
“The need for imagination, a sense of truth and a feeling of responsibility -
- these are the three forces which are the very nerve of education. ”
Rudolf Steiner
“Avoid compulsion and let early education be a manner of amusement.
Young children learn by games; compulsory education cannot remain in
the soul. ” Plato
Environment
“The challenge is to construct environments and ways of living life that will
boost creativity and increase children’s inborn curiosity for seeking
information and learning. ” N. Kobayashi
“The success of early childhood education will depend on whether it can
connect the learning environments of home and school. It should be built
on the interaction and communication between children, teachers and
parents. ” Carla Rinaldi
Examinations
“I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to
ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my
knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment
had only one result: I did not do well in examinations. ” Winston
Churchill
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“One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations,
whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on
me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the
consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire
year. ” Albert Einstein
Fairy Tales
“To have brilliant children, tell them fairy tales. To have even more
brilliant children, tell them even more fairy tales. ” Albert Einstein
Family
“Take back control of your family's schedule. Choose with your children
the activities that matter most. And most importantly, schedule some
down time every week. Make sure there are open spaces – time to just be
a family - with plenty of room for rest and imagination. ” Mark W. Merrill
“Imagine an education system where none of the educators are trained.
Indeed, where training is seen as a sign of weakness. There is no
curriculum but the amount to be learned is vast and is assumed that
everyone knows what it is. There is no assessment, but if people fail the
penalties are severe. This is not any old education system but the
foundation of every course, job, and profession the world. It is of course
the family. ” Titus Alexander
Games
“Avoid compulsion and let early education be a manner of amusement.
Young children learn by games; compulsory education cannot remain in
the soul. ” Plato
Genius
“A genius must be a well-rounded person, familiar with many things: art,
music, science and sports. He or she can't be restricted to only one field of
expertise. ” Yoshiro Nakamatsu
“Traditional academic programs are sometimes poorly suited to humans of
extraordinary potential. One is left to wonder how many geniuses did not
survive educational disasters. ” John Curtis Gowan
“Society has not given the same attention to the education of the genius
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as has been given to other groups. We spend millions every year for the
mentally retarded. The unfortunate child of superior intellect spends his
time in a usual commonplace school assimilating a diet far below his
expected capacity. ” Josephine Concannon
“It surely may be questioned whether geniuses like Mozart would have
reached the prominence they did if they were kept from public
performance or tournaments because that would be exploiting the child! It
is also an abuse to withhold opportunities from precocious youngsters who
are eager to advance and excel. ” Sidney L. Pressey
“All children are born geniuses, and we spend the first six years of their
lives degeniusing them. ” Buckminster Fuller
“The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it
does not know what to do with genius. ” Oliver Wendell Holmes
Gifted
“Never in the nation's history has there been so vital a need for careful
nurturance of the nation's gifted student pool. Never has there been so
great a threat of annihilation of importance of values and mores. Never
has there been such a dire need for better minds in so many increasingly
complex problem areas of our national life. ” Theodore E. Tetrault
“It is known that the unrecognized gifted child is the one who is often
punished rather than being rewarded for his abilities. The creative child is
often able to do two or three things at once. Typically the teacher doesn't
like this because in her estimation this child is not attending to the class
lesson. Repeatedly the child is scolded and punished and banished from
the group, when actually he isn't giving any real trouble. ” Ann Issacs
“By this refusal to recognize special gifts, we have wasted and dissipated,
driven into apathy or schizophrenia, uncounted numbers of gifted children.
If they learn easily, they are penalized for being bored when they have
nothing to do; if they excel in some outstanding way, they are penalized
for being conspicuously better than the peer group and teachers warn the
gifted child, "yes, you can do that; it's much more interesting than what the others are doing. But, remember, the rest of the class will dislike you
for it. ” Margaret Mead
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“Gifted children, especially young ones, often have difficulty in making
friends. So when a child becomes so absorbed in his own activities that he
doesn't have friends, it's because he hasn't had a chance to make the
right kind. ” E. Paul Torrance
“There are gifted children and, like other minorities, they need help. It
may be difficult to grasp why children with the potential to achieve
eminence should require special attention. To a very considerable extent,
those individuals who constitute that "creative minority" in our society have achieved their eminence in spite of rather than because of our school
system. ” Dr. Harold C. Lyon, Jr
“More often than not, children are unevenly gifted, often being especially
gifted in one area. It's not uncommon to find them quite gifted in a
specific area, but average or learning-disabled in another. ” Ellen Winner
“As with a disability, giftedness can lead to unhappiness and social
isolation. With adult minds in children's bodies, profoundly gifted children
tend to be persecuted by other children. They tend to find little
commonality with their age peers, relating to older children or adults. ”
Ellen Winner
Grown-ups
“We need grown-ups who are also children, who speak the language of
children's dreams. ” Francois Debary
Home
“The home is the principal learning environment for the child and parents
are the primary educators. ” Thomas Armstrong
Homework
“Some children were not interested in attending school because there was
too heavy an emphasis on homework. We should shift the focus of the
school day away from homework and toward in-school learning. ” Ibrahim
Sobhan
Imagination
“The need for imagination, a sense of truth and a feeling of responsibility -
- these are the three forces which are the very nerve of education. ”
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Rudolf Steiner
Inspiration
“Encourage your child to appreciate the inspiration that surrounds him.
Marvel at the power of the wind, the immensity of the ocean, the
perfection of a snowflake, the night sky, or the rugged beauty of a
mountain range. ” Brenda Nixon
Judgement
“Whenever we pass judgment on a child, we fail to see him as a whole
person. True, he may be nervous, shy, stubborn, moody, or violent; we
may know his siblings or his background, or think we recognize family
traits. But to focus on any one aspect of a child, especially a negative one,
is to put him in a box whose sides may not really be determined by
reality, but only by our own expectations. ” Johann Christoph Arnold
Learning
“Real learning is a process of discovery and if we want it to happen, we
must create the kind of conditions in which discoveries are made. We
know what these are. They include time, leisure, freedom, and lack of
pressure. ” John Holt
“Learning does not begin and end at the classroom door, but must be
integrated into the lives of children, taking into account their home and
community life. It needs to be a relevant, interesting experience for
children whose attention can too often be diverted by television and video
games. ” Michele Jolin
“When you create an environment where learning can happen, learning
happens. ” Maria Montessori
“Seventy-five percent of teachers are sequential, and analytic
presenters... and 70% of all their students do not learn that way. ” Eric Jansen
Mind
“The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child. ” Thomas
Edison
“The mi