Marva Collins Quotes about Children

There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.

Students do not need to be labeled or measured any more than they are. They don't need more Federal funds, grants, and gimmicks. What they need from us is common sense, dedication, and bright, energetic teachers who believe that all children are achievers and who take personally the failure of any one child.

I'm a teacher. A teacher is someone who leads. There is no magic here. I do not walk on water. I do not part the sea. I just love children.

The more monies we spend, the less children learn; because the more machines we have there, the more gadgets, the more gimmicks, the less children have to really think - the less they have to use their innate abilities, their curiosity, their brains.

Kids don't fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures, they are the problem.

We've been brainwashed into thinking that it takes more monies than it actually does to educate children. That's been one of the brainwash jobs.

An error means a child needs help, not a reprimand or ridicule for doing something wrong.

None of you has ever failed. School may have failed you. Goodbye to failure, children. Welcome to success.

That's how I try to think of education - a school is a miniature society where children learn to function in a real world.

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind.

Everyone who comes in is just amazed that our children do not have the animosity, the hatred, because these children are into it. You know, once you learn to like yourself, then you don't see this black-white bit. I still say that a good basic education is the only thing. I feel guilty sometimes because I don't think Jesus Christ could get any more accolades than I do when I walk through that classroom, even from the children I do not teach. They know that I love them, but I am forever telling them, "Get into that seat so you can have choices in this world."

I believe the more difficult a child is, the more I want that child. But I won't take a child until the parent brings him to us. So it is just the opposite - we get the ones that no one else will take. We get sawdust, and we have to make boards out of it.

I got so tired of hearing those proverbs when I was a child. Now I use them all the time. Sometimes they are the best way to say what needs to be said. I teach them to my students. I have a collection of proverbs for class discussion and writing assignments.

Teaching children to read was one thing; keeping them interested in reading was something else.

I'm not one of those who say this is the way. I'm not that opinionated. I can only say this is my way. Even the $1,000 scholarship that my son could have gotten from the state of Illinois to go to college, we didn't want. I'd rather get out and work and have my children know that their money comes from their parents and we have to work for it.

You can't find me 20 children in Chicago, I don't care which section you go in - you can be on Michigan Avenue or here - and they won't be able to tell you that y is a vowel when it's the final syllable in a word, as in Nancy and icy. And no one bothers to teach the rules anymore - "i before e except after c."

Our children learn the phonetic method, which is why they're very good spellers, I suppose. Because rather than ABC or just saying a word, they'll have to go a as in apple and all the other a's there are in the English language. They learn that when they're four. Children all over America can tell you that a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y are vowels. But you ask them about that "sometimes y," and they can't tell you.

One night my son was downstairs studying, and he had been up so late all that week, and my husband said, "I feel so sorry for him." I said, "Look, if he's going to become a surgeon" - he is studying to be a doctor - "he's going to have his hard times. I feel sorry for him too, but if he lives in this world he's going to have more hard times. He's going to stay up some more nights." I think we can't shield them from the hard times, even though we'd like to. I say to the children that I teach and to my own - I can't test the ground for you and tell you that's a safe step there.

I think what we've done is given children a lot of things that they didn't ask for instead of what they do want.

Parents often brag about the amount of money spent per child, but I think, perhaps ironically, those great monies that are spent - I call it putting a band-aid on a hemorrhage.

One of the things that even wealthy children need is an education, and I think the problems I saw really have nothing to do with economics. So I was unhappy with what my own children were getting even in the better schools, and then I was seeing so many children here recruited for failure.

I was very, very unhappy with even the so-called very elite schools. The one thing I've always done every day with my children is to watch what they do at school, and I was always a bit unhappy with the academic program. It was a kind of hit and miss.