We feel strongly that the spirit characteristic of America at its noblest, above all the pursuit of higher learning, cannot admit of any conditions as to personnel other than those designed to promote the objects for which this institution is established, and particularly with no regard whatever to accidents of race, creed, or sex.
Interpretation
Education should be inclusive and based solely on merit and purpose, irrespective of race, creed, or sex.
Abraham Flexner emphasizes that the essence of America's noblest spirit lies in its commitment to higher learning, which should be free from discrimination based on race, creed, or sex. He advocates for an educational environment that prioritizes the goals of knowledge and personal development over arbitrary social distinctions.
In practice
In a graduation speech to promote inclusivity in education.
At no period of [Michael Faraday's] unmatched career was he interested in utility. He was absorbed in disentangling the riddles of the universe, at first chemical riddles, in later periods, physical riddles. As far as he cared, the question of utility was never raised. Any suspicion of utility would have restricted his restless curiosity. In the end, utility resulted, but it was never a criterion to which his ceaseless experimentation could be subjected.
Teachers need to be comfortable talking about feelings.
Real knowledge, like every thing else of the highest value, is not to be obtained so easily. It must be worked for, — studied for, — thought for, — and more than all, it must be prayed for.
Give me a child for the first 5 years of his life and he will be mine forever.
I learned that five- and-six-year-old kids have already figured out how to be intolerant.
Public school - where the human mind is drilled and manipulated into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression.
All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.
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