If you ask a ten-year-old girl what she wants to do when she grows up and a fourteen-year-old girl what she wants to be when she grows up, in many cases, the older child will have a much less free sense of what's possible.
Interpretation
As children grow older, their dreams and aspirations often become constrained by societal expectations.
This quote highlights how the curiosity and open-mindedness of childhood can dwindle as children age, often replaced by a more limited view of possibilities. The contrast between the aspirations of a ten-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old girl reflects the societal pressures and experiences that can shape a child's perception of their future, indicating that growing up can sometimes mean losing the freedom to dream boldly.
In practice
A teacher could use this quote to encourage students to keep dreaming big despite societal expectations.
Nobody would know me from my own description of myself; which is why, when called upon (rarely, I grant) to provide an account, I tailor it, I adapt, I try to provide an outline that can, in some way, correlate to the outline that people understand me to have -- that, I suppose, I actually have, at this point. But who I am in my head, very few people really get to see that. Almost none. It's the most precious gift I can give, to bring her out of hiding.
Years ago, I worked in a newspaper office, and there were men that would have fits of temper, and it was just accepted that that's who they were, and everyone would laugh about it, but if a woman got upset or angry, something wasn't right: she was 'hysterical' or 'a little unhinged.' It didn't have the same sort of connotation at all.
We think that - as kids, you know - that kids make up stories and live in a sort of fictional place, but that, as grown-ups, we tell the truth and live in fact. But, of course, the reality is we take the facts that we know, and then we fill in all the blanks.
I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.
I went to a segregated school; I was born a Negro, not a black man.
You'll learn more in a day talking to customers than a week of brainstorming, a month of watching competitors, or a year of market research.
We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can "show off" and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.
So, I was in a segregated, all black, public elementary school until fourth grade, until my father died. And that's when my mother transferred me to a private, predominantly white school and I saw both sides of the world at a very young age.
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
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