This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mel Levine, formally Melvin D Levine
It is taken for granted in adult society that we cannot all be generalists skilled in every area of learning and mastery. Nevertheless, we apply tremendous pressure on our children to be good at everything. Every day they are expected to shine in math, reading, writing, speaking, spelling, memorization, comprehension, problem solving, socialization, athletics, and following verbal directions. Few if any children can master all of these “trades.” And none of us adults can. In one way or another, all minds have their specialties and their families.
Athletics | Children | Day | Good | Learning | Reading | Society | Writing | Society | Following |
[Learning] must never be imposed as a Task, nor made a Trouble to them. There may be Dice and Playthings with the Letters on them to teach Children the Alphabet by playing; and twenty other Ways may be found, suitable to their particular Tempers, to make this kind of Learning a Sport to them.
Religion in its true sense emphasizes the insight into our experiences and the consciousness that insists upon learning something from them.
Consciousness | Insight | Learning | Religion | Sense |
Learning to learn is to know how to navigate in a forest of facts, ideas and theories, a proliferation of constantly changing items of knowledge. Learning to learn is to know what to ignore but at the same time not rejecting innovation and research.
Ideas | Innovation | Knowledge | Learning | Research | Theories | Time | Learn |
I’m learning the difference between humor and comedy, between the laugh that lasts forever and the one that evaporates as soon as it hits the air. Humor is giving, and comedy is taking away. Humor is companionable, comedy cold. Humor is character, comedy personality.
Character | Comedy | Giving | Humor | Learning | Personality |
The existentialist insight, in part, is that meaning is something we give to life. We do not find meaning so much as throw ourselves at it. The Zen insight, in part, is that worrying about meaning may itself make life less meaningful than it might have been. Part of the virtue of the Zen attitude lies in learning to not need to be busy: learning there is joy and meaning and peace in simply being mindful, not needing to change or be changed. Let the moment mean what it will.
Change | Insight | Joy | Learning | Life | Life | Meaning | Need | Peace | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Zen |
When a child takes his first steps alone, stumbles, and falls, we would never say he failed. Failing is a part of the learning process. Reframing the meaning of our own shortcomings and failures can be an important step in our personal growth.
There isn’t one senior manager in this company who hasn’t been associated with a product that flopped. That includes me. It’s like learning to ski. If you’re not falling, your not learning.
Learning |
Ronald R. Schmeck, fully Ronald Ray Schmeck
We learn by thinking and the quality of the learning outcome is determined by the quality of our thoughts.
Raphael Simon, possibly also writes under Pseudonymous Bosch
Prayer is God’s own psychotherapy for His sinful children. It is His method of uncovering unconscious motivations and of recalling to consciousness those thins which have been excluded as painful and humiliating.
Children | Consciousness | God | Method | Prayer |
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.
Books | Education | Important | Learning | Mind | Need | Training | Learn | Think | Value |