Quote

But, if you observe children learning in their first few years of life, you can see that they can and do learn on their own - we leave them alone to crawl, walk, talk, and gain control over their bodies. It happens without much help from parents.

We learn differently as children than as adults. For grown-ups, learning a new skill is painful, attention-demanding, and slow. Children learn unconsciously and effortlessly.

A strenuous effort must be made to train young people to think for themselves and take independent charge of their lives.

Self-esteem comes from who you have in your life. How you were raised. What you struggled with as a child.

For a kid, self-esteem can be as close at hand as a sports victory or a sense of belonging in a peer group. It's a much more complicated and elusive proposition for adults, subject to the responsibilities and vicissitudes of grown-up life.

There's a reason why young people think what they think. They are taught it. In many cases when they learn at home is erased or countered or overcome.

Sometimes in the world, there's such pressure to follow a certain path that we forget the importance of learning as we go.

To teach one's self is to be forced to learn twice.

As a teacher I realize that what one learns in school doesn't serve for very much at all, that the only thing one can really learn is self-understanding, and this is something that can't be taught.

Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.