The need to be right can arise from a fear of being disrespected. Or it may come out of the fear of being seen as we really are: as flawed human beings who are perfectly imperfect and full of contradictions and confusions.
Julian TreasureRead
We spend all our time teaching reading and writing. We spend absolutely no time at all, in most schools, teaching either speaking or, more importantly still, listening.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the lack of focus on speaking and listening skills in education, despite their importance.
Julian Treasure's quote highlights a significant gap in the traditional education system, where the emphasis is predominantly placed on reading and writing skills. He argues that while literacy is essential, equally vital are speaking and listening, which are often overlooked in school curricula. This lack of attention to oral communication skills may hinder students' ability to effectively express themselves and engage with others in meaningful ways.
Themes
EducationListeningSpeakingCommunicationSkills
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about improving education, one could quote this to advocate for better communication skills training.
More from Julian Treasure
All quotes βYou can't truly listen to someone and do anything else at the same time.
Julian TreasureRead
The human voice: It's the instrument we all play. It's the most powerful sound in the world, probably. It's the only one that can start a war or say 'I love you.' And yet many people have the experience that when they speak, people don't listen to them.
Julian TreasureRead
Intention is very important in sound, in listening. When I married my wife, I promised her I would listen to her every day as if for the first time. Now that's something I fall short of on a daily basis.
Julian TreasureRead
Just three minutes a day of silence is a wonderful exercise to reset your ears and to recalibrate so that you can hear the quiet again. If you can't get absolute silence, go for quiet; that's absolutely fine.
Julian TreasureRead
People find birdsong relaxing and reassuring because over thousands of years, they have learnt when the birds sing, they are safe; it's when birds stop singing that people need to worry.
Julian TreasureRead
Similar quotes
The man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things. [from her Newberry Award acceptance speech]
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The job of a teacher is to excite in the young a boundless sense of curiosity about life, so that the growing child shall come to apprehend it with an excitement tempered by awe and wonder.
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Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree.
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Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.
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Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.
Alfred Whitney GriswoldRead
Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?
Peter ThielRead