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Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window QUOTES

Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window QUOTES

1 " Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

2 " Drying her eyes, Mother said to Totto-chan very slowly, "You're Japanese and Masao-chan comes from a country called Korea. But he's a child, just like you. So, Totto-chan, dear, don't ever think of people as different. Don't think, 'That person's a Japanese, or this person's a Korean.' Be nice to Masao-chan. It's so sad that some people think other people aren't nice just because they're Koreans. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

3 " Schools normally schedule one subject, for example, Japanese, the first period, when you just do Japanese; then, say, arithmetic the second period, when you just do arithmetic. But here it was quite different. At the beginning of the first period, the teacher made a list of all the problems and questions in the subjects to be studied that day. Then she would say, “Now, start with any of these you like.” […] This method of teaching enabled the teachers to observe - as the children progressed to higher grades - what they were interested in as well as their way of thinking and their character. It was an ideal way of teachers to really get to know their pupils. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

4 " Little did the children realize then that these walks - a time of freedom and play for them - were in reality precious lessons in science, history and biology. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

5 " Punya mata, tapi tidak melihat keindahan; punya telinga, tapi tidak mendengar musik; punya pikiran, tapi tidak memahami kebenaran; punya hati tapi hati itu tak pernah tergerak dan karena itu tidak pernah terbakar. Itulah hal-hal yang harus ditakuti, kata Kepala Sekolah. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

6 " Down through the ages and in the whole world, Watt and Newton cannot have been the only ones to notice the steam from a boiling kettle or observe an apple fall. Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

7 " He wanted to teach the children that all bodies are beautiful. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

8 " But there’s no doubt that children have an innate sense of humor. No matter how young they are, they always know when something’s really funny. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

9 " children could be taught to hear and feel music in their minds rather than just with their ears; how to make them feel music as a thing of movement rather than a dull, lifeless subject; how to awaken a child’s sensitivity. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

10 " That's splendid. That will do. You got up this morning. You've made everyone understand that. You don't have to be amusing or make people laugh to be a good speaker. The important thing is that you said you hadn't anything to talk about & you did find something to say. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

11 " She was always doing things like that & hurting herself, but the headmaster never sent for Mother & Daddy. It was the same with the other children. Matters were always settled between the headmaster & the child concerned. Just as he had listened to Totto-Chan for four hours the day she first arrived at the school, he always listened to what a child had to say about an incident caused. He even listened to their excuses. And if the child had done something really bad & eventually recognized it was wrong, the headmaster would say, "Now apologize. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

12 " […] this headmaster asked parents to include in their children’s lunch boxes “something from the ocean and something from the hills.” “Something from the ocean meant sea food - things such as fish and tsukuda-ni (tiny crustaceans and the like boiled in soy sauce and sweet sake), while "something from the hills” meant food from the land - like vegetables, beef, pork and chicken. Mother was very impressed by this and thought that few headmasters were capable of expressing such an important rule so simply. Oddly enough, just having to choose from two categories made preparing lunch seem simpler. And besides, the headmaster pointed out that one did not have to think hard or be extravagant to fulfil the two requirements. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

13 " You might wonder why the headmaster allowed the children to swim naked. There were no rules about it. If you brought your suit and wanted to wear it, that was perfectly all right. On the other hand, like today, when you suddenly decided to go in and hadn’t a suit, that was perfectly all right, too. And why did he let them swim in the nude? Because he thought it wasn’t right for boys and girls to be morbidly curious about the differences in their bodies, and he thought it was unnatural for people to take such pains to hide their bodies from each other. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

14 " He wanted to teach the children that all bodies are beautiful. Among the pupils at Tomoe were some who had polio, like Yasuaki-chan, or were very small, or otherwise handicapped, and he felt if they bared their bodies and played together it would rid them feelings of shame and help to prevent them from developing an inferiority complex. As it turned out, while the handicapped children were shy at first, get soon began to enjoy themselves, and finally they got over their shyness completely. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

15 " Besides that, he thought it was essential for them to learn how to get up in front of people & express their ideas clearly & freely without being embarrassed, so he decided to put his theory into practice. "

― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi , Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window