Best 10 quotes of Gary Thomas on MyQuotes

A defeatist attitude kills almost as many marriages as affairs do.

Aside from the straightforwardly visible curriculum, there is the hidden curriculum. This exists in the wider set of beliefs and values pupils acquire because of the way that a school is run and its teaching organized. It is about the behaviour of the teachers, the textbooks chosen, the school rules.

Bruner discusses the need for teachers to understand that children should want to study for study's own sake, for learnings's sake, not for the sake of good grades or examination success. The curriculum should, in other words, be interesting. (Yes, it sounds too obvious even to say, but sometimes the emphasis on content has trumped all other considerations, including that of making learning interesting.)

Heloise learned to love Abelard solely for who he was. That forbidden love brought her nothing but pain, but she would rather have shame and pain with Abelard than peace and happiness without him.

It's not enough to survive, a lifelong love is all about thriving in a ministry-minded marriage that impacts others.

No man can be everything. A successful long-distance cyclist can't be a bodybuilder. Though there are exceptions, dedicating one's time to becoming exceptional at one thing usually means not being exceptional at a whole lot of other things. Since no man can be everything, one of the best gifts to give is acceptance-'You don't have to be anything other than what you are.

One of the most significant consequences of the proliferation of tests over the last decades of the 20th century and the first of the 21th has been this tendency of assessment to direct the curriculum. Like a huge magnet, assessment drags curriculum toward it. It should, of course, even if we accept the need for tests, be the other way round: the curriculum should be shaped independent of any consideration of tests: tests should be constructed and administered in another space, both literally and metaphorically, hermetically sealed not only form the teacher’s gaze but also – and even more importantly – from the teacher’s consideration. In practice, though, this never happens. It is inevitable that if you decide regularly to test children's performance on the curriculum, and if, furthermore, you make teacher’s careers and school’s futures depend on the result, the tests will very quickly come to dominate what is taught. Not only the content, but also the style and manner of the teaching will be influenced by the tests. Teaching will be about getting the right answer, irrespective of understanding.

Spiritual purpose and mission can overcome weaknesses in character because God redeems our characters...

The curriculum is not, in practical terms, simply about knowledge being transmitted, but about how that knowledge is handled – or even how it is transcended – by teachers to enable understanding in their charges. The subject matter itself, the knowledge, while important, is less important than the opportunities it offers for the development of thinking. Knowledge, Stenhouse suggested, should principally be seen in the curriculum as a medium for thinking. His point is perhaps doubly true today, when knowledge pure and simple – facts, information – is so easily located. [...] what can now be found in seconds may have taken days or weeks to find, so the more that could be stored in the head, the better equipped a person was for life. The world of knowledge has been turned on its head in a period of only two decades or so by the Internet, and in our thinking about the curriculum we haven’t yet worked out the consequences.

The mature response, however, is not to leave; it's to change -- ourselves. Whenever marital dissatisfaction rears its head in my marriage -- as it does in virtually every marriage -- I simply check my focus. The times that I am happiest and most fulfilled in my marriage are the times when I am intent on drawing meaning and fulfillment from becoming a better husband rather than from demanding a "better" wife. If you're a Christian, the reality is that, biblically speaking, you can't swap your spouse for someone else. But you can change yourself. And that change can bring the fulfillment that you mistakenly believe is found only by changing partners. In one sense, it's comical: Yes, we need a changed partner, but the partner that needs to change is not our spouse, it's us! I don't know why this works. I don't know how you can be unsatisfied maritally, and then offer yourself to God to bring about change in your life and suddenly find yourself more satisfied with the same spouse. I don't why this works, only that it does work. It takes time, and by time I mean maybe years. But if your heart is driven by the desire to draw near to Jesus, you find joy by becoming like Jesus. You'll never find joy by doing something that offends Jesus -- such as instigating a divorce or an affair.