When I say to a parent, "read to a child", I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate.
Interpretation
Encouraging reading to children should be enjoyable, not a chore.
This quote emphasizes that when encouraging parents to read to their children, it should be framed as a delightful activity rather than an obligation. Mem Fox uses the metaphor of chocolate to convey that reading should be a sweet experience, fostering a love for books and learning in children.
In practice
During a parent-teacher conference to emphasize the importance of reading.
If every parent understood the huge educational benefits and intense happiness brought about by reading aloud to their children, and if every parent- and every adult caring for a child-read aloud a minimum of three stories a day to the children in our lives, we could probably wipe out illiteracy within one generation.
The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading.
Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way through the world.
It is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents.
There is nothing so costly as ignorance.
The thought of these vast stacks of books would drive him mad: the more he read, the less he seemed to know β the greater the number of the books he read, the greater the immense uncountable number of those which he could never read would seem to beβ¦. The thought that other books were waiting for him tore at his heart forever.
I feel very strongly indeed that a Cambridge education for our scientists should include some contact with the humanistic side. The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about ... It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent.
Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
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