A quote from a book I skimmed several years ago came to mind today. It directly relates to yesterday's post on "Caught not taught."

"The single most important factor in an individuals education is his teachers. All of us remember particular individuals who influenced and inspired us and gave direction to our lives. Not buildings, programs, curricula, philosophies of education, but men and women who by virtue of their personalities and their love of some discipline, some book, some kind of learning, opened the world to us, and showed us things we had not seen before, gave life a meaning it had not had before. What we need if we are to touch the minds of children, rescue the public school system and the democracy it should nourish, are inspiring teachers. They are precisely what the present system (i.e. colleges of education as currently constituted) militates against. Although they exist here and there, they do what they do in spite of the present system of preparation and in spite of all the odds against them which the system presents. Isn't it time we changed it?"

Rita Kramer, Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America's Teachers, Free Press/Macmillan, New York, 1991; p.222
Technology doesn't matter? Student-centered pedagogy is worthless? The emphasis seems to be on the educator (human) rather than the books, blogs and blackboards.

What role does this eighteen year-old quote play in today's literature filled with buzz words such as 21st century skills, constructivism and accountability?