William W. Purkey
1929–2024. William Watson Purkey
4 genuine quotes, each found in the text, and 1 wrongly credited to Purkey.
American educational psychologist, professor of counselor education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 1976 and co-founder of the International Alliance for Invitational Education, who wrote on self-concept and ‘invitational education’. Online he is best known as the author of the ‘dance like there’s nobody watching’ quatrain, whose core lines come from Susanna Clark and Richard Leigh’s 1987 song ‘Come from the Heart’; in a 2001 e-mail reply to an enquirer, later posted online, he gave his version and wrote that most of the words were his, but he could not document that it came before the song.
EndpaperAn AI‑generated pattern made for this page, in the manner of the Push Pin style (1954–1980).
Genuine Purkey quotes
- A student is the most important person ever in this school.
Robert M. Markham and Paul Shelly, Coming from Behind: A “Catch-up” Philosophy in Education. The Story of Carver Middle School (Meridian Public School District, October 1996), opening poster What is a Student?; ERIC ED402071, What is a Student? poster, reproduced in Coming from Behind (October 1996), PDF page 3.
- No one can choose a beneficial direction in life without hope that change for the better is possible.
William Watson Purkey and John Michael Novak, An Introduction to Invitational Theory, September 2015, An Introduction to Invitational Theory (September 2015), p. 3, Optimism.
- While everything in life adds to, or detracts from, human success or failure, nothing is more important in life than people. It is the people who create a respectful, optimistic, trusting and intentional society.
William Watson Purkey, What Is Invitational Education and How Does It Work?, conference paper; ERIC ED334488, What Is Invitational Education and How Does It Work?, People subsection, printed p. 7 (PDF page 8).
- People possess untapped potential in all areas of human endeavor. The uniqueness of human beings is that no clear limits to potential have been discovered.
William Watson Purkey, What Is Invitational Education and How Does It Work?, conference paper; ERIC ED334488, What Is Invitational Education and How Does It Work?, Basic Assumptions of Invitational Education, Optimism (PDF page 3).
Quotes wrongly credited to Purkey
- You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.
Misattributed. Susanna Clark and Richard Leigh wrote it, not Purkey.
Paraphrased: Purkey’s thought, in other words
- Human potential, though not always apparent, is there waiting to be discovered and invited forth.
Paraphrase. The idea is in William Watson Purkey, What Is Invitational Education and How Does It Work?, conference paper, Annual California State Conference on Self-Esteem, Santa Clara, February 22–24, 1991; ERIC ED334488, p. 11 (PDF page 12), ‘Where Is Invitational Education Headed?’, immediately before ‘Conclusion’.