Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.
Interpretation
Children should be taught to see individuals beyond stereotypes related to age, sex, color, class, or religion.
This quote by Margaret Mead emphasizes the importance of educating children to recognize the uniqueness of individuals rather than categorizing them based on societal stereotypes. It suggests that by understanding the diversity within every group, children can develop a more nuanced and respectful perspective towards others, seeing both the negative and positive traits that exist in all communities.
In practice
In a school assembly focused on diversity, this quote can help students reflect on their perceptions of others.
Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.
Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.
We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
EARTH DAY uses one of humanity's great discoveries, the discovery of anniversaries by which, throughout time, human beings have kept their sorrows and their joys, their victories, their revelations and their obligations alive, for re-celebration and re-dedication another year, another decade, another century, another eon.
American society is very like a fish society. . . . Among certain species of fish, the only thing which determines order of dominance is length of time in the fishbowl. The oldest resident picks on the newest resident, and if the newest resident is removed to a new bowl, he, as oldest resident, will pick on the newcomers.
When human beings have been fascinated by the contemplation of their own hearts, the more intricate biological pattern of the female has become a model for the artist, the mystic, and the saint. When mankind turns instead to what can be done, altered, built, invented, in the outer world, all natural properties of men, animals, or metals become handicaps to be altered rather than clues to be followed.
The younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which in school and press the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit as immoral, where to employ a hundred people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honorable.
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.
Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.
Here's the thing: If you don't want your kids to read a book, fine. You can tell them not to read a book, and maybe they will and maybe they won't. But you can't say what other kids can read.
But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.
Some Poor grad student pressing on the flanks of a hamster and out comes a doctorate on the other side
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