A biography for Jerome Brunerhasn’t been written yet.
“One seeks to equip the child with deeper, more gripping, and subtler ways of knowing the world and himself.”
“Being able to "go beyond the information" given to "figure things out" is one of the few untarnishable joys of life. One of the great triumphs of learning (and of teaching) is to get things organised in your head in a way that permits you to know more than you "ought" to. And this takes reflection, brooding about what it is that you know. The enemy of reflection is the breakneck pace - the thousand pictures.”
“In sum, then, "thinking about thinking" has to be a principal ingredient of any empowering practice of education.”
“Stimuli, however, do not act upon an indifferent organism.”
“Learners are encouraged to discover facts and relationships for themselves.”
“There is a deep question whether the possible meanings that emerge from an effort to explain the experience of art may not mask the real meanings of a work of art.”
“The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion - these are the most valuable coins of the thinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness.”
“In the perception of the incongruous stimuli, the recognition process is temporarily thwarted and exhibits characteristics which are generally not observable in the recognition of more conventional stimuli.”
“Education must, be not only a transmission of culture but also a provider of alternative views of the world and a strengthener of the will to explore them.”