Each day millions of children arrive in American classrooms in search of more than reading and math skills. They are looking for a light in the darkness of their lives, a Good Samaritan who will stop and bandage a bruised heart or ego.
Interpretation
Children in classrooms seek emotional support and understanding beyond academic skills.
This quote emphasizes that the role of educators extends beyond teaching fundamental skills like reading and math. It highlights the importance of providing emotional support and compassion to students, who often face struggles in their personal lives, thus advocating for a holistic approach to education that nurtures both the mind and the heart.
In practice
In a school board meeting discussing the importance of teacher training.
A nation that does not read much does not know much. And a nation that does not know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box, and the voting booth. And those decisions ultimately affect the entire nation...the literate and illiterate.
No player in the NBA was born wanting to play basketball. The desire to play ball or to read must be planted. The last 25 years of research show that reading aloud to a child is the oldest, cheapest and must successful method of instilling that desire. Shooting baskets with a child creates a basketball player; reading to a child creates a reader.
It seems to me that the great pleasure of human life is not in having an opinion, but rather in learning all the ways you are wrong, and all the nuances you failed to account for, and all the truths that turned out to be not as simple as you once believed. And it seems to me that one of the central pleasures of attending school is that you get to read with really well-informed people who can help welcome you into a complex world stuffed with rich and maddening ambiguity.
Even though a high IQ is no guarantee of prosperity, prestige,_x000D_ or happiness in life, our schools and our culture fixate on_x000D_ academic abilities, ignoring the emotional intelligence that also_x000D_ matters immensely for our personal destiny.
I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians put together.
I think children love reading, and they will make time for it if we put the right books into their hands. And I hope I get the chance to keep being one of the people that writes them.
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
American computer science grads often have very little exposure to the human condition. They've rarely had manual labor or service jobs. They grow up in a bubble of privilege lulled into thinking this country is a true meritocracy.
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