A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild. A teacher, finally, has nothing to go on but faith, a student nothing to offer in return but testimony.
Interpretation
The impact of a teacher extends beyond their immediate students, influencing future generations in unseen ways.
Wendell Berry emphasizes the long-lasting and often unrecognized influence teachers have on their students and, subsequently, their descendants. This quote reflects the belief that education is a profound act of faith, where teachers invest in their students with the hope that their contributions will shape lives in the future, and students honor this by sharing their experiences and testimonies.
In practice
In a graduation speech emphasizing the importance of educators and their long-term impact.
We weren't allowing our hopes to become expectations. Expectations are tempting, pleasant, maybe necessary. They are scary too, once you have had some experience. They are not necessarily and not always a bucket of smoke, but they can be and are even likely to be.
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.
We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
I'm sure I am impatient sometimes. I sure do get angry sometimes. I think it's outrageous how hard it is to get this country to feed its children and to take care of its children, to give them a decent education.
Never stand still. Only stand still enough to learn, and once you stop learning in that stance, move off. Always keep yourself engaged, in theater, in whatever job you can get. If you can't get an acting job, then go backstage. Or take tickets. But be around actors because that is where you will primarily learn.
In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer - in any language - would reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West.
Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.
Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.
Intelligence tests are biased toward the literate.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.