Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.
Interpretation
It takes significant knowledge to teach those who are already educated, but an even greater level of understanding is necessary to reach those who have not received proper guidance.
Horace Mann emphasizes the challenges faced by educators in reaching students who have not had the benefit of previous instruction. He implies that teaching those who have been neglected requires not only a deep understanding of the subject matter but also an awareness of the varied life experiences and backgrounds of those learners. The quote underlines the importance of investing in knowledge and understanding to effectively teach and uplift those who are underserved.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech addressing the importance of educational reform.
Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.
Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.
Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.
Don't dumb down; always write for your top five percent of readers.
It's not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.
Why are fanatics so terrified of girls' education? Because there's no force more powerful to transform a society. The greatest threat to extremism isn't drones firing missiles, but girls reading books.
I love to read. I wish I could advise more people to read. Thereβs a whole new world in books. If you canβt afford to travel, you travel mentally through reading. You can see anything and go any place you want to in reading.
There's something missing about how we're informing the youngsters coming along about what matters in the world. We teach them the numbers and the letters, but we fail to communicate the importance of our connection to the living world.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.