Middle-class families know education begins at birth.
Geoffrey CanadaRead
Kids who are poor often have families that have not really been kept informed about... how important it is to read to your child, to reduce stresses in their life, to use positive incentives and words.
Interpretation
Reading to children and using positive reinforcement can significantly impact their well-being and development.
Geoffrey Canada highlights the crucial role of education and support for children from low-income families. He emphasizes the importance of engaging parents in their children's literacy development and emotional well-being, suggesting that informed families can better support their children through reading and positive communication.
In practice
During a community workshop for parents on child development.
Middle-class families know education begins at birth.
I want to be a children’s hero… Children need heroes because heroes give hope; without hope they have no future.
Why is it that when we had rotary phones, when we were having folks being crippled by polio, that we were teaching the same way then that we're doing right now?
When kids know that you refuse to let them fail ... they don't give up as easy. So sometimes they don't have it inside, [but] they're like,'You know, I don't want to do this, but I know my mother's going to be mad.'That matters to kids, and it helps get them through.
I want my kids to graduate from high school. But that's not enough. I also want them to go to college. Why? Because rich people's kids go to college. And if that's good enough for them, it's good enough for my kids. Because you know what? College graduates don't tend to go to jail as frequently as nongraduates.
People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 50 years that things don't get better.
If the education of our kids comes from radio, television, newspapers - if that's where they get most of their knowledge from, and not from the schools, then the powers that be are definitely in charge, because they own all those outlets.
If you sit kids down, hour after hour, doing low-grade clerical work, don't be surprised if they start to fidget. Children are not, for the most part, suffering from a psychological condition, they're suffering from childhood.
Emotions are a critical source of information for learning.
History education in schools is so poor that students often enter college ignorant of the past - and leave just as unenlightened.
To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember this happening was when I was 10, with a biography of Thomas Edison.
We need all hands on deck, and that means clearing hurdles for women and girls as they navigate careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.
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