“We've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate.”

As quoted in "The Paternal Pride of Maurice Sendak" by Bernard Holland, in The New York Times (8 November 1987)
Context: We've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren't. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they're really protecting themselves. Besides, you can't protect children. They know everything.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 22, 2020. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate." by Maurice Sendak?
Maurice Sendak photo
Maurice Sendak 53
American illustrator and writer of children's books 1928–2012

Related quotes

Buckminster Fuller photo

“There will come a time when the proper education of children, by a glorified system of spontaneous education of choice, similar to the Montessori System, will be made possible.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1920s–1950s, 4D Timelock (1928)
Context: There will come a time when the proper education of children, by a glorified system of spontaneous education of choice, similar to the Montessori System, will be made possible. Children, as well as grown-ups, in their individual, glorified, drudgery-proof homes of Labrador, the tropics, the Orient, or where you will, to which they can pass with pleasure and expedition by means of ever-improving transportation, will be able to tune in their television and radio to the moving picture lecture of, let us say, President Lowell of Harvard; the professor of Mathematics of Oxford; of the doctor of Indian antiquities of Delhi, etc. Education by choice, with its marvelous motivating psychology of desire for truth, will make life ever cleaner and happier, more rhythmical and artistic.

Rick Perry photo

“I don't think the federal government has a role in your children's education.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

2011-08-16T15:28
Rick Perry: 'I Don't Think The Federal Government Has A Role' In Education
Ian
Millhiser
Scott
Keyes
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/08/16/297174/perry-vs-education/
posed question: "I would like to know your position on the federal government's role in my children's education."
2011

Joycelyn Elders photo

“We've tried ignorance for a thousand years. It's time we try education.”

Joycelyn Elders (1933) American pediatrician, public health administrator, and former Surgeon General of the United States

On sex education
Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, "Abstinence" http://www.sho.com/site/video/player.do?video=/134/2006/abstinence&seriesid=134 [4.10], 5 June 2006

Lydia Sigourney photo

“We speak of educating our children. Do we know that our children also educate us?”

Lydia Sigourney (1791–1865) American poet

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 51.

Ernest Rutherford photo

“We've got no money, so we've got to think.”

Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist

As quoted in Quips, Quotes, and Quanta : An Anecdotal History of Physics (2007) by Anton Z. Capri, page 65.
Quoted by Edward Andrade in Rutherford and the Nature of the Atom http://books.google.com/books?id=VVoeXNceuVwC (1964)
Unsourced variant: We didn't have the money, so we had to think.

Ernest Dimnet photo

“Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.”

Ernest Dimnet (1866–1954) French writer

Attributed to Ernest Dimnet in: Rhonda L. Clements, Leah Fiorentino (2004) The Child's Right to Play: A Global Approach. p. 111

“If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

As quoted in "The Paternal Pride of Maurice Sendak" by Bernard Holland, in The New York Times (8 November 1987) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE6DC103CF93BA35752C1A961948260&scp=2&sq=Sendak+protecting&st=nyt
Context: Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what's real and what's not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.

Thornton Wilder photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo

“If children have interests then education happens.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

As quoted in Ted Talk "The child-driven education" http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html by Sugata Mitra (2012)
2000s and attributed from posthumous publications

Pythagoras photo

“Educate the children and it won't be necessary to punish the men.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists‎ (2007) by James Geary

Related topics