I lived in a world where social arrangements were taken for granted and assumed to be timeless. A child's obligation was to learn these usages, not to question them. The complexities of racial deportment were of a piece with learning manners and etiquette more generally.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the social norms and expectations placed on individuals, particularly children, to learn and adhere to societal values without questioning them.
Drew Gilpin Faust's quote reflects on the ingrained social structures that are often accepted uncritically, particularly by children who are taught to navigate these complexities as part of their upbringing. It suggests that learning societal manners and racial conduct is equated with understanding one's role in a broader social context, reinforcing the idea that such norms are both intricate and deeply rooted in culture.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of understanding social structures, this quote could be used to illustrate how children are taught to conform.
When I was growing up in Virginia, the Civil War was presented to me as glorious with dramatic courage and military honor. Later, I realized how death was central to the reality. It was at the core of women's lives. It's what they talked about most.
High school students ought to seek out campus communities where they feel not only empowered to engage their talents, but also challenged to leave their comfort zones. The ability to embrace new opportunities emerges, in part, from a willingness to take risks and to fail.
As a kid, I was growing up in an era of celebration of the Civil War centennial, with a lot of 'Lost Cause' emphasis on the Confederacy. I used to play Civil War soldiers with my brothers as a child, and my older brother always insisted that he got to be Lee, and I got be Grant. I never knew that Grant won until quite some time had passed.
We have been telling and hearing and reading war stories for millennia. Their endurance may lie in their impossibility; they can never be complete, for the tensions and the contradictions within them will never be eliminated or resolved. That challenge is essential to their power and their attraction. War stories matter.
I've always done more than I ever thought I would. Becoming a professor - I never would have imagined that. Writing books - I never would have imagined that. Getting a Ph.D. - I'm not sure I would even have imagined that. I've lived my life a step at a time. Things sort of happened.
As we have sought through the centuries to define ourselves as human beings and as nations through the prisms of history and literature, no small part of that effort has drawn us to the subject of war. We might even say that the humanities began with war and from war, and have remained entwined with it ever since.
The great teachers fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life. I wanted to follow Mr. Monte around for the rest of my life, learning everything he wished to share of impart, but I didn't know how to ask.
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.
Turning on the television set can turn off the process that transforms children into people... It is primarily through observing, playing, and working with others older and younger than himself that a child discovers both what he can do and who he can become β that he develops both his ability and his identity.
Once it is recognized that productive thinking in any area of cognition is perceptual thinking, the central function of art in general education will become evident.
Every literate woman is a victory over poverty
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