I do understand people when they say that you destroy the magic of childhood if you encourage too much skeptical questioning.
Interpretation
Encouraging skepticism can diminish the wonder and imagination of childhood.
Richard Dawkins emphasizes the tension between fostering critical thinking and preserving the innocence and magic of childhood. While questioning the world is important for intellectual growth, too much skepticism might rob children of their ability to appreciate the fantastical and imaginative aspects of life, leading to a more mundane perspective on the world.
In practice
During a parenting seminar, a speaker could use the quote to discuss the balance between encouraging curiosity and preserving childhood wonder.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
It is not systematic education which somehow molds society, but, on the contrary, society which, according to its particular structure, shapes education in relation to the ends and interests of those who control the power in that society.
Look at any country that's plagued with poverty, disease or violence; the antidote is girls. Girls are the antibodies to many of society's ills.
If you really want to change a culture to empower women improve basic hygiene and health care and fight high rates of infant mortality the answer is to educate girls.
If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America’s alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart — and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.
The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people.
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
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