Cracking the Code for Teacher Well-being
By Ted Fish
“ A problem well stated is half-solved .” - Charles Kettering
About six months ago , a college dean whom I greatly respect relayed the above quote to me , saying it had become something of a credo in her workplace . When I asked who originated the statement , she didn ’ t know . When I looked it up on the internet , the source was identified as none other than John Dewey , the great American philosopher and founder of Progressive Education . I was delighted !
Imagine my surprise , then , when I discovered a few days ago that like many quotes circulating on the internet , the attribution was false . Dewey never wrote it ! The true source was Charles Kettering , head of research at General Motors for 20 years . I was preparing to scuttle the quote because it wasn ’ t from an educator but forged on . It turns out that Kettering , a contemporary of both Dewey and Thomas Edison , was extraordinary in his own right — a prolific inventor who held patents for the first freon refrigerant , leaded gasoline , the electrical starting motor , two-stroke diesel
Page 2 Spring 2023 CSEE Connections