Ted Sizer Quotes

The first object of any act of learning, over and beyond the pleasure it may give, is that it should serve us in the future. Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily.

— Ted Sizer

“You can't motivate a student you don't know.”

— Ted Sizer

“Inspiration, hunger: these are the qualities that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is to create the most likely conditions for them to flourish, and then get out of their way.”

— Ted Sizer

“A good education teaches you how to ask a question. It's knowing what you don't know; the skills of critical thought.”

— Ted Sizer

Every student, without exception,
should be able to succeed well
at something consequential.

— Ted Sizer

“Things remain the same because it is impossible to change very much without changing most of everything.”

— Ted Sizer

“Writing is the litmus paper of thoughtthe very center of schooling.”

— Ted Sizer

“The kids do what no one expects them to do. That's progress.”

— Ted Sizer

“The schools schedule is a series of units of time; the clock is king.”

— Ted Sizer

“In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine.”

— Ted Sizer

“I cannot teach a child I do not know”

— Ted Sizer