Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree to which the community itself is connected to the larger culture.
Interpretation
Public libraries serve as vital community hubs that reflect a community's connection to broader culture.
In this quote, Russell Banks emphasizes the importance of public libraries as the last remaining community centers in America. He suggests that the extent to which these libraries engage with the larger cultural landscape mirrors how connected the community is to that culture, highlighting the role of libraries in fostering cultural awareness and community engagement.
In practice
In a speech about community engagement, one might say, 'As Russell Banks stated, public libraries are the sole community centers left in America.'
They were gone and I missed them but even so I was very happy. For the rest of my life no matter where on this planet earth I went and no matter how scared or confused I got, I could wait until dark and look up into the night sky and see my three friends again and my heart would swell with love of them and make me strong and clearheaded.
I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting.
Motivations are too tangled and complex.
Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.
Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.
I imagine a school system that recognizes learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers...creativity above fact regurgitation...individuality above conformity.. and excellence above standardized performance..... And we must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.
Over the past five years, I've met several presidents, several secretaries of education ... and there is no plan. If you want to save your children, you're going to have to do it yourself. It's just us.
A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.
I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they're incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate, it's that it's incomplete.
Watching a child makes it obvious that the development of his mind comes through his movements.
The dumbing down of America is evident in the slow decay of substantive content, a kind of celebration of ignorance.
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