Einstein on Education

* Most teachers waste their time by asking questions which are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning has for its purpose to discover what the pupil knows or is capable of knowing.

* Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.

* Humiliation and mental oppression by ignorant and selfish teachers wreak havoc in the youthful mind that can never be undone and often exert a baleful influence in later life.

* The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.

* Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.

* In the teaching of geography and history a sympathetic understanding (should) be fostered for the characteristics of the different peoples of the world, especially for those whom we are in the habit of describing as “primitive.