The Having of Wonderful Ideas" and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning Quotes

“Teachers are often, and understandably, impatient for their students to develop clear and adequate ideas. But putting ideas in relation to each other isn't a simple job. It's confusing and this confusion does take time. All of us need time for our confusion if we are to build the breadth and depth that give significance to our knowledge.”
― Eleanor Duckworth, The Having of Wonderful Ideas" and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning

“What I have learned from the teachers with whom I have worked is that, just as there is no simple solution to the arms race, there is no simple answer to how to work with children in the classroom. It is a matter of being present as a whole person, with your own thoughts and feelings, and of accepting children as whole people, with their own thoughts and feelings. It's a matter of working very hard to find out what those thoughts and feelings are, as a starting point for developing a view of a world in which people are as much concerned about other people security as they are about their own”
― Eleanor Duckworth, The Having of Wonderful Ideas" and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning

“All of us, from children to scientists, have difficulty accepting data that go against our firmly held beliefs. We have to restructure too much of our intellectual framework to assimilate such surprises. It is far less costly, at least for a time, to keep the framework and deny the fact.”
― Eleanor Duckworth, The Having of Wonderful Ideas" and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning