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.
Interpretation
Withholding education from children is detrimental to their development and well-being.
Horace Mann emphasizes the critical importance of education for children, arguing that depriving them of this essential resource is akin to starving their souls. He distinguishes between mere frugality and true economy, suggesting that true economic prudence includes investing in the education and well-being of future generations, as it enriches both individuals and society as a whole.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a speech advocating for 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.
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.
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.
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.
I became a journalist because I didn't want to have to rely on the press for information... I only read it to make sure of whatever everyone else thinks is going on, because it's useful to know what people think is the news.
The progress of the world depends almost entirely upon education.
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.
The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role impressed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.
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.
Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.