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.
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.
Writing practice brings us back to the uniqueness of our own minds and an acceptance of it. We all have wild dreams, fantasies, and ordinary thoughts. Let us to feel the texture of them and not be afraid of them.Writing is still the wildest thing I know.
I had a lot of really terrible advice early in my writing career, and I cheesed off people without even knowing it, all the while thinking I was implementing good advice. Well, what can you do about it? Next.
Books are alive, you see. They're not dead, they're alive.
I have seen schools across the country working long and hard to embed a commitment to the unlimited development of every student into their cultures. The result, in terms of motivated learners and test scores, often is spectacular.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.