“In the connected age, reading and writing remain the two skills that are most likely to pay off with exponential results. Reading leads to more reading. Writing leads to better writing. Better writing leads to a bigger audience and more value creation. And the process repeats.”
Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“School is at its best when it gives students the expectation that they will not only dream big, but dream dreams that they can work on every day until they accomplish them – not because they were chosen by a black-box process but because they worked hard enough to reach them.”
Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“The two pillars of a future-proof education: Teach kids how to lead; help them learn how to solve interesting problems.”
Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“What we can’t do is digitize passion. We can’t force the student to want to poke around and discover new insights online. We can’t merely say, ‘here,’ and presume the students will do the hard (and scary) work of getting over the hump and conquering their fears. Without school to establish the foundation and push and pull our students, the biggest digital library in the world is useless.”
Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“If there’s information that can be written down, widespread digital access now means that just about anyone can look it up. We don’t need a human being standing next to us to lecture us on how to find the square root of a number or sharpen an ax. (Worth stopping for a second and reconsidering the revolutionary nature of that last sentence.) What we do need is someone to persuade us that we want to learn those things, and someone to push us or encourage us or create a space where we want to learn to do them better. If all the teacher is going to do is read her pre-written notes from a PowerPoint slide to a lecture hall of thirty or three hundred, perhaps she should stay home. Not only is this a horrible disrespect to the student, it’s a complete waste of the heart and soul of the talented teacher. Teaching is no longer about delivering facts that are unavailable in any other format.”
Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“We can teach people to desire lifelong learning, to express themselves, and to innovate. And just as important, it’s vital we acknowledge that we can unteach bravery and creativity and initiative. And that we have been doing just that. School has become an industrialized system, working on a huge scale, that has significant by-products, including the destruction of many of the attitudes and emotions we’d like to build our culture around.”
Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“As soon as we associate reading a book with taking a test, we’ve missed the point.” ~ Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“Most learning, especially most organizational learning, occurs through trial and error. Error occurs whether you want it to or not. Error is difficult to avoid. It’s not clear that research or preparation have an enormous impact on error, especially marketing error. Error is clearly not in short supply. Trial, on the other hand, is quite scarce, especially in some organizations. People mistakenly believe that one way to successfully avoid error is to avoid trial. We need more trial.”
Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“People with an impoverished vocabulary live an impoverished emotional life; people with rich vocabularies have a multihued palette of colors with which to paint their experience, not only for others, but for themselves as well.” ~ Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within
“I discovered at a very early age that life is a classroom. You get the best education in everyday experiences when you take the time to absorb what is happening around you. Life is the best teacher, and if you’re lucky, your education doesn’t end after college – it’s just the beginning.” ~ Cristina Carlino
“You have been hypnotized or conditioned by an educational processing-system arranged in grades or steps, supposedly leading to some ultimate Success. First nursery school or kindergarten, then the grades or forms of elementary school, preparing you for the great moment of secondary school! But then more steps, up and up to the coveted goal of the university. Here, if you are clever, you can stay on indefinitely by getting into graduate school and becoming a permanent student. Otherwise, you are headed step by step for the great Outside World of family-raising, business, and profession. Yet graduation day is a very temporary fulfillment, for with your first sales-promotion meeting you are back in the same old system, being urged to make that quota (and if you do, they’ll give you a higher quota) and so progress up the ladder to sales manager, vice-president, and, at last, president of your own show (about forty or forty-five years old). In the meantime, the insurance and investment people have been interesting you in plans for Retirement – that really the ultimate goal of being able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of all your labors. but when that day comes, your anxieties and exertions will have left you with a weak heart, false teeth, prostate trouble, sexual impotence, fuzzy eyesight, and a vile digestion.” ~ Alan Watts, The Book
I Am Malala [Book]
Book Overview: When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls’ education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons. I Am Malala will make you believe in the power of one person’s voice to inspire change in the world.
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Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. The Kindle edition of this book comes highly recommended on Amazon.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“‘Let us pick up our books and our pens,‘ I said. ‘They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.’” ~ Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala
“As we crossed the Malakand Pass I saw a young girl selling oranges. She was scratching marks on a piece of paper with a pencil to account for the oranges she had sold, as she could not read or write. I took a photo of her and vowed I would do everything in my power to help educate girls just like her. This was the war I was going to fight.” ~ Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala