We urgently need a paradigm shift in our concept of the purposes and practices of education. We need to leave behind the concept of education as a passport to more money and higher status in the future and replace it with a concept of education as an ongoing process that enlists the tremendous energies and creativity of schoolchildren in rebuilding and respiriting our communities and our cities now, in the present.
Interpretation
Education should focus on community engagement and personal growth rather than merely financial success.
Grace Lee Boggs emphasizes the need for a fundamental change in how we view education. Instead of viewing it solely as a means to achieve wealth and status, she advocates for an approach that fosters creativity and energy in students, allowing them to contribute actively to their communities in the present moment. This perspective shifts the focus from future rewards to current participation and impact.
In practice
In a speech about education reform, a speaker might use this quote to highlight the need for a transformative approach to teaching.
We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other. We urgently need to bring the neighbor back into our hoods, not only in our inner cities but also in our suburbs, our gated communities, on Main Street and Wall Street, and on Ivy League campuses.
People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.
How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison?
You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.
Keep recognizing that reality is changing and that your ideas have to change. Don’t get stuck in old ideas.
The struggle we're dealing with these days, which, I think, is part of what the 60s represented, is how do we define our humanity?
The current state of knowledge is a moment in history, changing just as rapidly as the state of knowledge in the past has ever changed and, in many instances, more rapidly.
Why is it that when we had rotary phones, when we were having folks being crippled by polio, that we were teaching the same way then that we're doing right now?
He had been so busy getting away from the library, he hadn't paid attention to where he was going.
I don't think that everyone should become a mathematician, but I do believe that many students don't give mathematics a real chance.
Youths are passed through schools that don’t teach, then forced to search for jobs that don’t exist and finally left stranded in the street to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.
American writer_x000D_ _x000D_ 1803-1882_x000D_ _x000D_ Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.
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