“Schools everywhere have always confined themselves to making students learn techniques and write essays, while proscribing treading for pleasure. It seems to be established in perpetuity, in every part of the world, that enjoyment has no part to play in the curriculum, and that knowledge can only be the fruit of suffering.”

— Daniel Pennac

The Rights of the Reader (2008 translation by Sarah Adams)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Schools everywhere have always confined themselves to making students learn techniques and write essays, while proscrib…" by Daniel Pennac?

Daniel Pennac 4

French author 1944

Related quotes

“Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility — these are the very foundation of any real civilization, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, in every school.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Just for Animals; quoted in Souls Like Ourselves by Andrea Wiebers and David Wiebers (Rochester, MN: Sojourn Press, 2000), p. 16.

“It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 269

“It is the great glory of the quest for human knowledge that, while making some small contribution to that quest, we can also continue to learn and to take pleasure in learning.”

William Alfred Fowler (1911–1995) American nuclear physicist

William A. Fowler's speech at the Nobel Banquet http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1983/fowler-speech.html, December 10, 1983.

“Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

“There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: Taxation No Tyranny https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Taxation_No_Tyranny (1775)

“When students' language, culture and experience are ignored or excluded in classroom interactions, students are immediately starting from a disadvantage. Everything they have learned about life and the world up to this point is being dismissed as irrelevant to school learning; there are few points of connection to curriculum materials or instruction and so students are expected to learn in an experiential vacuum. Students' silence and nonparticipation under these conditions have frequently been interpreted as lack of academic ability or effort, and teachers’ interactions with students have reflected a pattern of low expectations which become self-fulfilling.”

Jim Cummins (professor) (1949) professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto

Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society (1996), pp. 2-3

“In plain, what passes for a curriculum in today's schools is little else than a strategy of distraction… It is largely defined to keep students from knowing themselves and their environment in any realistic sense”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: In plain, what passes for a curriculum in today's schools is little else than a strategy of distraction... It is largely defined to keep students from knowing themselves and their environment in any realistic sense; which is to say, it does not allow inquiry into most of the critical problems that comprise the content of the world outside the school (... one of the main differences between the "advantaged" student and the "disadvantaged" is that the former has an economic stake in giving his attention to the curriculum while the latter does not. In other words, the only relevance of the curriculum for the "advantaged" student is that, if he does what he is told, there will be a tangible payoff.)

“All the geography, trigonometry, and arithmetic in the world are useless unless you learn to think for yourself. No school teaches you that. It's not on the curriculum.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book Marina

Source: Marina

“We have no choice, we people of the United States, as to whether or not we shall play a great part in the world. That has been determined to us by fate, by the march of events. We have to play that part. All that we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Address at Mechanics' Pavilion San Francisco May 13 1903 books.google.de http://books.google.de/books?id=zSJNPOphC_MC&pg=PA98
Quoted in The Audacity of Hope (2006) by Barack Obama, p. 282 as follows: The United States of America has not the option as to whether it will or it will not play a great part in the world … It must play a great part. All that it can decide is whether it will play that part well or badly.
1910s

“No medical school has a pain curriculum…”

John Bonica (1917–1994) Anesthesiologist; pioneer in pain management

As quoted by Richard Weiner, "An interview with John J. Bonica, M.D." Pain Practitioner 1 (1989):2

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Daniel Pennac 4

Related quotes

Related topics