A Quote by Utah Phillips

Every good educator knows that true teaching is to teach kids how to ask the right questions. — © Utah Phillips
Every good educator knows that true teaching is to teach kids how to ask the right questions.
I think that every educator, indeed every human being, is concerned with what is true and what is not; what experiences to cherish and which ones to avoid; and how best to relate to other human beings. We differ in how conscious we are of these questions; how reflective we are about our own stances; whether we are aware of how these human virtues are threatened by critiques (philosophical, cultural) and by technologies (chiefly the digital media). A good educator should help us all to navigate our way in this tangled web of virtues.
My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another.
You've never seen me debate anybody. On anything. Ever. My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another. What the laws of physics say.
To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, 'How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?' The honest answer is, I don't know.
How hard would it be to ask children what they see in their heads? How big should the house be in comparison to the family standing in front of it? What is it about the anatomy of the people that doesn't look right? Then let them try it again. Teach them to learn how to see and ask questions.
Basketball is such a good platform to be able to have a real impact on kids. We don't have all the answers, but we can tell kids the importance of asking questions and working hard. Maybe they go to their teacher and ask questions because their favorite player told them it was a good thing to do.
I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.
The mother must teach her son how to respect and follow the rules. She must teach him how to compete successfully with the other boys. And she must teach him how to find a woman to take care of him and finish the job she began of training him how to live in a family. But no matter how good a job a woman does in teaching a boy how to be a man, he knows that she is not the real thing, and so he tends to exaggerate the differences between men and women that she embodies.
The art of good teaching begins when we can answer the questions our students are really trying to ask us, if only they knew how to do so.
The difference between a good educator and a great educator is that the former figures out how to work within the constraints of traditional policies and accepted assumptions, whereas the latter figures out how to change whatever gets in the way of doing right by kids. 'But we've always...', 'But the parents will never...', 'But we can't be the only school in the area to...' - all such protestations are unpersuasive to great educators. If research and common sense argue for doing things differently, then the question isn't whether to change course but how to make it happen.
Many people think that it is the function of a spiritual teaching to provide answers to life's biggest questions, but actually, the opposite is true. The primary task of any good spiritual teaching is not to answer your questions, but to question your answers.
People don't understand that, when I was at WCW, if I wasn't wrestling that night, I was down at the Power Plant teaching. I was teaching people how to do stuff, but every time you teach someone, you learn more. The more you learn, the more you teach. The more you teach, the better you get.
Your most important task as a leader is to teach people how to think and ask the right questions so that the world doesn't go to hell if you take a day off.
Here's the teaching point, if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions, and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions.
An expert knows all the answers - if you ask the right questions.
Writers always sound insufferably smug when they sit back and assert that their job is only to ask questions and not to answer them. But, in good part, it is true. And once you become committed to one particular answer, your freedom to ask new questions is seriously impaired.
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