Preach it/ Just Do It
General Philosophy
We believe it is important that a school be 'led' by a set of agreed shared beliefs. To achieve this staff and community need to enter into 'learning conversation's to define and articulate such a philosophy. As it is said: If you stand for nothing you will fall for anything' or 'Control your own destiny or someone else will'.
'What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy.' John Dewey
'We need a metamorphosis of education - from the cocoon a butterfly should emerge. Improvement does not give us a butterfly only a faster caterpillar.' Learning to Learn www.learningtolearn.sa.edu.au
'No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it. We need to see the world anew.' Albert Einstein
'Insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting the different results' Albert Einstein.
'Some people would rather die than think'. Bertrand Russell
'If we always do what we've always done, we will get what we've always got.' Adam Urbanski
'One can never consent to creep when one feels the compulsion to soar'. Helen Keller
'Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.' Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr
'Ten geographers who think the world is flat will tend to reinforce each others errors….Only a sailor can set them straight'. John Ralston Saul, 'Voltaire's Bastards'.
'The faithful witness, like…Socrates, Voltaire, and Swift and Christ himself, is at his best when he is questioning and clarifying and avoiding the specialists obsession with solution. He betrays society when he is silent…He is true to himself and to people when his clarity causes disquiet.' John Ralston Saul 'Voltaire's Bastards'
'Anecdotes, personal stories, reminiscences, like biblical parables, are the medium through which faith is restored. Stories are a form of poetry, and give us a saving image to personally relate to.' Peter Block Business Philosopher
'Wordsmiths who serve established power…castrate the public imagination by subjecting language to a complexity which renders it private. Elitism is always their aim.' John Ralston Paul, 'Voltaire's Bastards.'
'It is today we must create the world of the future.' Eleanor Roosevelt
'The human mind treats a new idea the way a body treats a strange problem it rejects it.' Sir Peter Medawar
'Some folks are wise, some are otherwise'. Tobies George Smollett
To arrive at the simplest truth requires years of contemplation.' Isaac Newton
'Those who do nothing are never wrong.' Theodore de Bouville
'The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.' From the Go -Between
'We are natural mind changing entities until we are 10 or so. But as we get older…then it is very hard to change our minds'. Howard Gardner
'Fundamentalism is a kind of decision not to change your mind about something…Many of us is fundamentalists…because it worked pretty well for us.' Howard Gardner
'Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail'. Ralph Waldo Emerson
'The world by and large has to be reinvented.' Charles Handy in 'Beyond Certainty'.
'There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.' Frederico Fellini Film Director
'Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge'. Winston Churchill
'There is nothing as useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.' Peter Drucker Business Philosopher.
'Don't try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present.' Peter Drucker
'I believe that revolutionary chaos may yet crystallize into new life forms.' M Gorbachev
'Chaos breeds life, where order breeds habit,' Henry Brooks US Historian
'Is anybody alive out there?' Bruce Springsteen to the crowd.
'It is impossible to soar like an eagle if you are surrounded by turkeys' Anon
'Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.' Ralph Waldo Emerson
'Complexity creates confusion, simplicity focus.' Edward de Bono
'To simplify you have to clarify. Simplification is the new competitive advantage' Jack Trout 'Simplicity'
'Our life is frittered away by detail.. simplicity simplicity, simplicity.' Henry Thoreau
'We need to be the authors of our own life.' Peter Senge
'We have banished our artists to the fringe of society and tell them to eat cake. It is our artists who choose freedom over safety and use their talents to question and confront the culture.' Peter Block, Philosopher
'We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming'. Verner von Braun
'First define, then refine'. Bill Guild NZ Pioneer teacher
