Neil Postman quotes - page 3

In the Middle Ages, there was a scarcity of information but its very scarcity made it both important and usable. (Neil Postman)
Print, in even more revolutionary ways than writing, changed the very form of civilization. View quote
Neil Postman
As one learns the language of a subject, one is also learning what the subject is. View quote
Neil Postman
One of the most common manifestations of the lack of this kind of semantic awareness can be found in what is called "prejudice": a response to an individual is predetermined because the name of the class in which the person is included is prejudiced negatively. View quote
Neil Postman
Very often children make declarative statements about things when they really mean only to elicit an informative response. In some cases, they do this because they have learned from adults that it is "better" to pretend that you know than to admit that you don't. View quote
Neil Postman
Children come to school having been deeply conditioned by the biases of television. View quote
Neil Postman
What might have been politically therapeutic at one time may prove politically fatal at another. View quote
Neil Postman
Every course would be a course in methods of learning and, therefore, in methods of teaching. View quote
Neil Postman
Definitions, like questions and metaphors, are instruments for thinking. Their authority rests entirely on their usefulness, not their correctness. We use definitions in order to delineate problems we wish to investigate, or to further interests we wish to promote. In other words, we invent definitions and discard them as suits our purposes. View quote
Neil Postman
There is no consistent, integrated conception of the world which serves as the foundation on which our edifice of belief rests. And therefore... we are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything. View quote
Neil Postman
Someone needs to mention what may be lost. (Neil Postman)
All the while, let's not forget, very little, if any, substantive intellectual activity is going on. View quote
Neil Postman
In order to understand what kind of behaviors classrooms promote, one must become accustomed to observing what, in fact, students actually do in them. View quote
Neil Postman
The relationship between information and the mechanisms for its control is fairly simple to describe: Technology increases the available supply of information. ...control mechanisms are strained... View quote
Neil Postman
Eliminate all restrictions that confine learners to sitting still in boxes inside of boxes. View quote
Neil Postman
All reading, in truth, is reading in a content area. View quote
Neil Postman
Language education... may achieve what George Bernard Shaw asserted is the function of art. View quote
Neil Postman
What causes us the most misery and pain... has nothing to do with the sort of information made accessible by computers. View quote
Neil Postman
The type who is now successful may be regarded as a handicapped learner - slow to respond, far too detached, lacking in emotion, inadequate in creating mental pictures of reality. View quote
Neil Postman
No one I have ever known is so brilliant as to have learned the languages of all fields of knowledge equally well. Most of us do not learn some of them at all. View quote
Neil Postman
It may come as a surprise to our technocrat philosophers, but people do not read, write, speak, or listen primarily for the purpose of achieving a test score. They use language in order to conduct their lives, and to control their lives, and to understand their lives. (Neil Postman)
Cultures may be classed into three types: tool-using cultures, technocracies, and technopolies. View quote
Neil Postman
In schools, print shifted the emphasis from oral to written and visual communication. View quote
Neil Postman
We no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe, and our relation to one another and our world. View quote
Neil Postman
In plain, what passes for a curriculum in today's schools is little else than a strategy of distraction... It is largely defined to keep students from knowing themselves and their environment in any realistic sense. View quote
Neil Postman