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Theory Quotes

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Theory Quotes

“It is the teaching of the Bible and of sound Political ethics that the education of children belongs to the sphere of the family and is the duty of the parents. The theory that the children of the Commonwealth are the charge of the Commonwealth is a pagan one, derived from heathen Sparta and Platoís heathen republic, and connected by regular, logical sequence with legalized prostitution and the dissolution of the conjugal tie.”

“If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color? What is the theory behind racist feminism?”

“We're like Magic 8-Balls. After you ask your question and shake the 8-Ball, you read the answer in the little window. If you ever broke open a Magic 8-Ball with a hammer, you discovered that it contained a many-sided plastic object, with an answer on every facet, floating in a cylinder of murky blue fluid. The many-sided core held the answer to your question. My theory is that, as with our children, as with every surface of that geodesic dome inside the 8-Ball, every age we've ever been is who we are.”

“There is little mysticism without an element of transcendence, and conversely, there is no transcendence without a certain degree of egocentrism. It may be that the genesis of these experiences is to be sought in the unique situation of the very young child in relation to adults. The theory of the filial origin of the religious sense seems to us singularly convincing in this connection.”

“Most liberal-minded folk would like to think that since they are not hostile to people of a different race, racism is a disease of the uneducated, unenlightened and socially backward - football hooligans, British National Party supporters, policemen. You could call this the Bad Guy Theory. But the Bad Guy Theory does not explain why Indian-heritage children do nearly twice as well as Pakistani-heritage children at GCSE.”

“Creationists reject Darwin's theory of evolution on the grounds that it is "just a theory". This is a valid criticism: evolution is indeed merely "a theory", albeit one with ten billion times more credence than the theory of creationism - although, to be fair, the theory of creationism is more than just a theory. It's also a fairy story. And children love fairy stories, which is presumably why so many creationists are keen to have their whimsical gibberish taught in schools.”

“The charity that begins at home cannot rest there but draws one inexorably over the threshold and off the porch and down the street and so out and out and out and out into the world which becomes the home wherein charity begins until it becomes possible, in theory at least, to love the whole of creation with the same patience, affection, and amusement one first practiced, in between the pouts and tantrums, with parents, siblings, spouse, and children.”

“For centuries it was never discovered that education was a function of the State, and the State never attempted to educate. But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power....When the revolutionary theory of government began to prevail, and Church and State found that they were educating for opposite ends and in a contradictory spirit, it became necessary to remove children entirely from the influence of religion.”

“Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great- grandparents, according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack their innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve the parents, whom they invariably love, of all responsibility.”

“The traditional educational theory is to the effect that the way to bring up children is to keep them innocent (i.e., believing in biological, political, and socioeconomic fairy tales) as long as possible ... that students should be given the best possible maps of the territories of experience in order that they may be prepared for life, is not as popular as might be assumed.”

“All in all, the communally reared children of Israel are far from the emotional disasters that psychoanalytic theory predicted. Neither have they been saved from all personality problems, as the founders of the kibbutz movement had hoped when they freed children from their parents. In any reasonable environment, children seem to grow up to be themselves. There is no evidence that communal rearing with stimulating, caring adults is either the ruination or the salvation of children.”

“A scientist, an artist, a citizen is not like a child who needs papa methodology and mama rationality to give him security and direction, he can take care of himself, for he is the inventor not only of laws, theories, pictures, plays, forms of music, ways of dealing with his fellow man, institutions, but also entire world view, he is the inventor of entire forms of like.”

“The action of the child inventing a new game with his playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the housewife devising a new sauce for the meat, a young author writing his first novel; all of these are in terms of definition, Creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less Creative.”

“No one seriously doubts that if Piraha children are brought up in Boston they'll be speaking Boston English, that is, that the capacities are present, unlike other animals, as far as is known. There's no challenge to the theory - not mine, but everyone's - that the human language faculty provides the means for generation of an infinite array of structured expressions.”