Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

I'm not interested in learning (or teaching) ideas that cannot be criticized .

Should alchemy be taught along side chemistry? I mean, some folks really believe it, and we should be fair.

One thing I learned during 35 years in education: Leaders are not as interested in solving problems as they are interested in having situations that can use as excuses.

Perhaps the most difficult lesson to learn as a teacher is that not everyone is as enamored with the subject as your are.

If you are the only person convinced by your argument, it isn’t very good.

Echo chambers are real.

See that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.
-Richard P. Feynman

"This technology will change everything" is hyperbole.

Are we at the point where we should include astrology in astronomy courses? I mean, lots of folks think its real and we should be fair to them right?

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.
- Robert Oppenheimer

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
-Richard Feynman

“The dogmatist within is always worse than the enemy without.”
― Stephen Jay Gould

That link that did not expect in your inbox… don’t follow it! 🤦‍♂️

So many accommodations we make are simply good teaching.

We’ve been asked to identity our “super powers” in a meeting. I’m finding it hard to resist the urge to say “recognizing self delusion.”

Forget teaching how to do taxes, if we teach the paradox of knowledge (“If you think you understand it, you are wrong”), we might be able to make better collective decisions.

Folks who come in to lead small organizations who have never worked in them have no idea how “departments of one” function. And it shows.

“Meetings to update us on the progress of x” usually occur during the time they scheduled for making progress on x.

Data collection should be carefully planned.

So many data-driven folks don’t understand this

Reading papers I submitted in college. One comment said, “You are something of a cynic, huh?”

Yes. Yes, I was… and still am 40 years later.