Quotes about classroom
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“It discourages the discussion of controversial matters in the classroom, for such discussion may be reported, or misreported, and cause trouble”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 88
Context: The search for subversives results in the intimidation of the independent, the original, the imaginative, and the experimental-minded… It discourages the discussion of controversial matters in the classroom, for such discussion may be reported, or misreported, and cause trouble.

“About the last place any of us can expect to learn anything important about the realities we have to cope with in our wistful pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness is a classroom.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: About the last place any of us can expect to learn anything important about the realities we have to cope with in our wistful pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness is a classroom. If we decided that schools must do whatever is necessary to help students to learn the concepts and skills relevant to the nuclear space age, we wouldn't spend much time sitting inside of small boxes inside of boxes — even with all the fancy hardware being developed to jazz up the Trivia contest. It's probably true that most of what we all know we didn't learn in school anyway. Moreover, developments in electronic information processing make the school as it presently exists unnecessary... the "new education." Its purpose is to produce people who can cope effectively with change. To date, none of the new "educational technology" has that as its purpose. Remember Santayana's line: Fanaticism consists of redoubling efforts after having forgotten one's aim. The developments in "educational technology" are intended to do all of the old school stuff better... but that's not the aim of the new education.

Life, Reality, Learning, Happiness

“I sat and cursed myself. Why did I always appear so dumb when I was called upon to perform something in a crowd? I knew how to write as well as any pupil in the classroom, and no doubt I could read better than any of them, and I could talk fluently and expressively when I was sure of myself. Then why did strange faces make me freeze? I sat with my ears and neck burning, hearing the pupils whisper about me, hating myself, hating them; I sat still as stone and a storm of emotion surged through me”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Hate, Appearance, Reading

“Real understanding of a thing comes from taking it apart oneself, not reading about it in a book or hearing about it in a classroom.”

Robert B. Laughlin (1950) American physicist

Nobel Prize autobiography (1998)
Context: Real understanding of a thing comes from taking it apart oneself, not reading about it in a book or hearing about it in a classroom. To this day I always insist on working out a problem from the beginning without reading up on it first, a habit that sometimes gets me into trouble but just as often helps me see things my predecessors have missed.

Books, Understanding, Reading

“But I was still shy and half paralyzed when in the presence of a crowd, and my first day at the new school made me the laughingstock of the classroom. I was sent to the blackboard to write my name and address; I knew my name and address, knew how to write it, knew how to spell it; but standing at the blackboard with the eyes of the many girls and boys looking at my back made me freeze inside and I was unable to write a single letter.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

School, Girl, Boy

“I have written a book with Jacob Laksin about universities called One Party Classroom.”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

Among other things, the title highlights the fact that so-called liberals have purged American faculties of conservative voices. It has been the most successful witch-hunt in American history.
[David, Horowitz, http://townhall.com/columnists/davidhorowitz/2009/05/04/the_threat_at_home, "The Threat at Home", townhall.com, July 31, 2006, 2014-21-06]
2009

Universe, Books

“I memorized it word for word after having heard it but once. Yet, despite my retentive memory, I found it impossible to recite when I went back into the classroom.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Memory