A nation that does not read much does not know much. And a nation that does not know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box, and the voting booth. And those decisions ultimately affect the entire nation...the literate and illiterate.
Interpretation
Reading leads to knowledge, which is crucial for making informed decisions in various aspects of life.
This quote emphasizes the importance of literacy and knowledge in shaping the choices individuals and societies make. A lack of reading and knowledge can result in poor decision-making at crucial levels, such as in personal homes, the economy, and democratic processes, ultimately impacting everyone in the nation, regardless of their literacy status.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of education, this quote can be used to highlight the value of reading.
Each day millions of children arrive in American classrooms in search of more than reading and math skills. They are looking for a light in the darkness of their lives, a Good Samaritan who will stop and bandage a bruised heart or ego.
No player in the NBA was born wanting to play basketball. The desire to play ball or to read must be planted. The last 25 years of research show that reading aloud to a child is the oldest, cheapest and must successful method of instilling that desire. Shooting baskets with a child creates a basketball player; reading to a child creates a reader.
I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else.
High-quality early-childhood programs and health coverage have expanded, and the number of mentoring relationships for at-risk youth has risen dramatically. That progress is encouraging, but it's not evenly distributed.
The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.
I engage my subjects in conversation, patterned after psychiatric questioning, with the aim of discovering something about the reasoning underlying their right but especially their wrong answers.
In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a 'continent,' a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.
There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
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