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William James Quotes about Teaching

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In teaching, you must simply work your pupil into such a state of interest in what you are going to teach him that every other object of attention is banished from his mind; then reveal it to him so impressively that he

In teaching, you must simply work your pupil into such a state of interest in what you are going to teach him that every other object of attention is banished from his mind; then reveal it to him so impressively that he will remember the occasion to his dying day; and finally fill him with devouring curiosity to know what the next steps in connection with the subject are.

William James
Art, Teaching, Psychology
William James (1912). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”

The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly; and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.

William James
Art, Mistake, Teaching
William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.15, Harvard University Press

Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.

William James
Teaching, Learning, Association
William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.103, Nuvision Pubns

Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.

William James
Art, Mistake, Teaching
William James (2013). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.4, Courier Corporation

The same is true of Love, and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love. The teacher who succeeds in getting herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure.

William James
Teacher, Teaching, Self Love
William James (2013). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.24, Courier Corporation

We hear the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we give it, or read in the bystander's eyes the success or failure of our conduct.

William James
Teaching, Eye, Bystanders
"Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals".

The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself hopeless as a psychologist.

William James
Teacher, Art, Teaching
William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.18, Harvard University Press

You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use.

William James
Art, Mistake, Teaching
William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.14, Nuvision Pubns

Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least.

William James
Teacher, Art, Teaching
William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.16, Harvard University Press

Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.

William James
Teacher, Art, Teaching
William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.12, Nuvision Pubns

The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.

William James
Teacher, Art, Teaching
William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.17, Nuvision Pubns

What a teacher needs to know about psychology "might almost be written on the palm of one's hand."

William James
Teacher, Art, Teaching

The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.

William James
Country, Teacher, Teaching
William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.11, Nuvision Pubns

Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves.

William James
Art, Teaching, Psychology
William James (2008). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.14, Nuvision Pubns

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