Primary School Quotes

“We teach brilliance bias to children from an early age. A recent US study found that when girls start primary school at the age of five, they are as likely as five-year-old boys to think women could be 'really really smart'. But by the time they turn six, something changes. They start doubting their gender. So much so, in fact, that they start limiting themselves: if a game is presented to them as intended for 'children who are really, really smart', five-year-old girls are as likely to want to play it as boys - but six-year-old girls are suddenly uninterested. Schools are teaching little girls that brilliance doesn't belong to them. No wonder that by the time they're filling out university evaluation forms, students are primed to see their female teachers as less qualified.”
― Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

“Grandma; it was to grandma I truly wanted to have returned, but she was no more. I could only remember the day she died. The tears mother shed on me, as if I was going to face a more difficult world than any other member of our family. Pg.100”
― Obehi Peter Ewanfoh, Still Owing Me Goodbye

“The proper concern of a primary school is not education in a narrow sense, and still less preparation for later life, but the present lives of the children.”
― George Dennison, The Lives of Children: The Story of the First Street School

“Hannah wanted to put the next day's work on the blackboard. This would mean that she needn't turn her back on the class first thing, which is as unwise in junior teaching as in lion-taming.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, At Freddie's

“Nog één keer zaten met z'n allen in die bol, waarna de gymleraar het teken gaf, we opstonden en we uit alle macht de parachute omhoogtrokken en loslieten. De parachute vloog naar boven en leek daar even te zweven. En daarmee was het speelmoment over.”
― Splinter Chabot, Confettiregen

“I learnt that in teaching young children the concept of number, you should start with the concrete, then move to the pictorial, before finally representing numbers in the abstract. I learnt that children should be encouraged to articulate their processes, and feed back to each other on whether they are right or wrong, and why. And I learnt that this is so children understand number concepts, not just procedures, because (though not only because) the PSLE tests understanding, not just memorisation. As I was chatting to the professor in the car as she gave me a lift to the station, she also expounded on the importance of teacher-student relationships – 'you can't touch their brain until you have touched their heart'.”
― Lucy Crehan, Cleverlands: The secrets behind the success of the world's education superpowers

“There is something about sudden darkness in a classroom of twenty-four sixth graders that sets off mischief. There was giggling on one side of the room. Spitballs on the other.”
― Rita Williams-Garcia, P.S. Be Eleven