classroom aphorisms

I am accidentally in correspondence with an erudite stranger. I sent him queries on the dilemma of content selection for my course, and this was his response:

"The best history, and the best learning, I believe, comes with the negation of the students and the teacher. Only the ideas should exist in the classroom--we leave ourselves outside.

American education has been doomed to mediocrity at best because we think ourselves too important. No. We are nothing. Ideas are everything...

Lazyness and apathy are the real enemy, not interpretive schema. It is against these that the teacher must fight..." --J.R., Kansas City.