Andy Hargreaves Quotes - Page 4

When the purge of teacher individualism is unrestrained, eccentricity, initiative and individuality become the casualties.

Physically, teachers are often alone in their own classrooms with no other adults for company. Psychologically, they never are.

Teaching is a passionate profession.

Culture is the possibility and impossibility that bacon and fruit can appear on the same plate.

It's time for the US to widen its circle of learning, not to circle its wagons against hostile ideas in education reform.

Arrogance is the conjoined twin of ignorance.

Evaluation schemes that implicate 100% of the staff to detect a small % of incompetents are a waste of time.

On teacher education: induction into current mandates must not turn into seduction away from best practice.

Trust processes as well as people.

There is a new science of complexity which says that the link between cause and effect is increasingly difficult to trace; that change (planned or otherwise) unfolds in non-linear ways; that paradoxes and contradictions abound; and that creative solutions arise out of diversity, uncertainty and chaos.

As we seek to eliminate individualism in teaching, we should not eradicate individuality with it.

You cannot understand the teacher or their teaching without understanding the person the teacher is.

It is not the time to put school districts up for auction. Now is the time to galvanize them into action.

There is no morality without temptation; otherwise it is just lack of opportunity.

Excellence is the asymptotic state that never quite reaches perfection.

Total teachers aren't perfect teachers.

Too often, shared visions really mean, "I have a vision; you share it!"

On technology: The teacher is mightier than the mouse.

On data: We are the drivers, not the driven.

Human growth is not like rhubarb. It can be nurtured and encouraged but it cannot be forced.

We should test prudently; not profligately.

Students are often the last to know about change that is occurring in their own school system.

On learning: if you really want alignment, go to a chiropractor.

Leadership is often the afterthought of educational change.

It is those who have the distinction of privilege who set the standards of disgust with failure.