I am writing this during my lunch period, because I need to reach towards the outside world of sanity, because I am overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the clerical work still to be done, and because at this hour of the morning normal ladies are still sleeping.

Bel Kaufman

Categorized in : Morning Writing Sleep

Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy. You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.

Bel Kaufman

laughter sadness laughing

Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.

Bel Kaufman

values connoisseur children

Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.

Bel Kaufman

teaching education jobs

Education can't make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.

Bel Kaufman

leader knowledge school

I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.

Bel Kaufman

sense-of-humor distance perspective

Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.

Bel Kaufman

mind discovery teacher

To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months' summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect. My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning.

Bel Kaufman

mother summer morning

Best marks go to cheaters and memorizers. Marks depend on memorizing and not on real knowledge. When you cram into your head for a test you may get a high mark but forget it the next day. That's not an education. I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing.

Bel Kaufman

cheater next-day real

Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.

Bel Kaufman

trying teacher people

Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one's best self.

Bel Kaufman

expression self love-is

But if there is such a thing as social commitment in literature, I think it must manifest itself in a reader's awareness of the human condition, in the writer's touching some common nerve ending. I think this kind of social commitment, like a lady's slip, should be there but it must not show.

Bel Kaufman

touching commitment thinking

The heart has its reasons; it's the mind that's suspect.

Bel Kaufman

reason mind heart

Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It's the skim milk that needs good teachers.

Bel Kaufman

mind teacher needs

I so enjoy being old because for the first time I don't have to do anything-work, teach, study. I feel very good about myself-and at my age I can say no to anything now if I don't want to do it. What a liberating word.

Bel Kaufman

age want firsts

Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.

Bel Kaufman

erratic collapse time

When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.

Bel Kaufman

volunteer kindness heart

The clerical work is par for the course. "Keep on file in numerical order" means throw in wastebasket. You'll soon learn the language. "Let it be a challenge to you" means you're stuck with it; "interpersonal relationships" is a fight between kids; "ancillary civic agencies for supportive discipline" means call the cops; "Language Arts Dept." is the English office; "literature based on child's reading level and experiential background" means that's all they've got in the Book Room; "non-academic-minded" is a delinquent; and "It has come to my attention" means you're in trouble.

Bel Kaufman

reading children art

People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.

Bel Kaufman

shells bread people

I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.

Bel Kaufman

broken reading school

I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot.

Bel Kaufman

different inspiring long