It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how easily negative beliefs can be instilled in young children, affecting their self-perception.
T. H. White's quote underscores the vulnerability of young children to negative reinforcement. It suggests that adults have a powerful influence on children's self-esteem, and careless words or actions can lead them to internalize feelings of worthlessness or shame, which can have lasting psychological effects. This call to mindfulness stresses the responsibility that adults bear in shaping a child's sense of self.
In practice
A teacher might use this quote while discussing the importance of positive reinforcement in the classroom.
Kay was older and bigger than the Wart, so that he was bound to win in the end, but he was more nervous and imaginative. He could imagine the effect of each blow that was aimed at him, and this weakened his defense. Wart was only an infuriated hurricane.
There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops...when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living.
The destiny of man is to unite, not to divide.
He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.
...All endeavours which are directed to a purely worldly end...contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption.
There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them.
Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.
Enter to learn; depart to serve.
Everybody should be interested in access to primary and secondary education for everybody.
The problem in our society and in our schools is to inclulcate, without overdoing it, the notion of education, as in the Latin educere--to lead, to bring out what is in someone rather than merely to indoctrinate him/her from the outside. (89)
I despise the phony, fancy-pants rhetoric of professors aping jargon-filled European locutions - which have blighted academic film criticism for over 30 years.
The arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, languages and maths all have equal and central contributions to make to a student's education.
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