For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the deep and transformative experience of teaching youth, encompassing both challenges and personal growth.
In this quote, W. E. B. Du Bois shares his reflections on his experiences as a teacher over a span of fifteen years, noting that this period was significant in shaping his identity and understanding. He describes it as a rich yet challenging journey filled with hard work, self-reflection, and moments of both disillusionment and wonder, highlighting the profound impact that education and mentorship can have on both the teacher and the students.
In practice
In a graduation speech to inspire students moving forward in life.
Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the Negro found public opinion determined to 'keep him in his place.'
Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools - intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it - this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.
School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
For most people, it is enough for the world to know that they aspire. The world does not ask what their aspirations are, trusting that those aspirations are for the best and greatest things. But with regard to the Negroes in America, there is a feeling that their aspirations in some way are not consistent with the great ideals.
The chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime.
What I really want are students who want to partner with other people, to be part of an organization and to influence people so that they can accomplish things that the organization would not have accomplished otherwise.
Our future lies with today's kids and tomorrow's space exploration.
To be interested is to be absorbed in, wrapped up in, carried away by, some object. To take an interest is to be on the alert, to care about, to be attentive.
From now on I hope always to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out.
I've spoken in every state in the union, meeting and hugging the people who later bought my books. I spoke to anybody who wanted to hear me, including 1,000 nuns who could pay me only with homemade bread.
My father believed young people are among our nation's most valuable resources, and so we should ensure that every child - including children and youth returning from the justice system - have access to the opportunities we would want for our own children.
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