Previous Quotes of the Month for 1999
February
"Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow."
Charles Bray,
The Education of the Feelings, 1838
March
"Five is a wonderful time of life for a little kid... It is a time when the eyes are wide open and the patterns are not yet set; a time when one has not yet been hammered into accepting everything as immutable and hopeless; a time when the hands cannot do enough, the mind cannot learn enough, the world is infinite and colorful and filled with mysteries. Five is a special time before they take the questing, unquenchable, quixotic soul of the young dreamer and thrust it into dreary schoolroom boxes. A time before they take the trembling hands that want to hold everything, touch everything, figure everything out, and make them lie still on desktops. A time before people begin saying 'act your age' and 'grow up' or 'you're behaving like a baby'. It is a time of delight, of wonder, of innocence."
Harlan Ellison,
"Jeffty Is Five" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July, 1977.
April
"Except in rare times of great stress or danger, there is no reason why we cannot say 'No' to children in just as kind a way as we say 'Yes'. Both are words. Both convey ideas which even tiny children are smart enough to grasp. One says, 'We don't do it that way', the other says 'That's the way we do it'. Most of the time, that is what children want to find out. Except when overcome by fatigue, curiosity, or excitement, they want to do it right, do as we do, fit in, take part."
John Holt
May
"It's so sad how abusive our world has become. I think the majority of people in this world have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, what happiness is possible when there is love."
Duen Hsi Yen,
Director, Malama Learning Facility
July
"You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself."
Galileo Gallilei
August
"When we are polite to children, we show in the most simple and direct way possible that we value them as people and care about their feelings."
Dr. David Elkind
September
"All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer
1788 - 1860
October
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Albert Einstein
November
"For success in training children the first condition is to become as a child oneself, but this means no assumed childishness, no condescending baby-talk that the child immediately sees through and deeply abhors. What it does mean is to be as entirely and simply taken up with the child as the child himself is absorbed by his life."
Ellen Key,
The Century of the Child (1909).
More Quotes of the MonthDecember
"What distinguishes a human being from a computer? The ability to add up numbers? The ability to understand language? The ability to be logical? It is, of course, none of the above. It is the ability to play. Computers cannot have fun. They cannot fantasize. They cannot dream, they cannot experience emotion or summon intuition. These rare, precious qualities come naturally to every child on this earth yet they tend to be seen, by well meaning adults, as faults, foibles and failings. In pushing tiny toddlers to 'perform', we rob them of the ability to imagine."
Jonathan Cainer