In America we have big issues with education - in impoverished communities especially. I work with Teach For All, and so we're encouraging more people to get into teaching.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the challenges in the education system, particularly in disadvantaged areas, and emphasizes the need for more individuals to join the teaching profession.
In this quote, John Legend points out the significant educational disparities that exist in the United States, especially within impoverished communities. He advocates for greater efforts in education reform and supports initiatives like Teach For All, which aims to inspire and recruit more individuals to enter the teaching field. By doing so, he underscores the importance of quality education as a means to uplift communities and address social inequities.
In practice
During a conference on educational reform, I shared this quote by John Legend to highlight the importance of investing in teachers in disadvantaged areas.
Hip-hop is one of the most free art forms there is. There's so many sounds you can use, so many things you can bring in. You never know, man. I bet years ago people would've never said they would hear me with Rick Ross, and we did four classic songs together.
For me as a songwriter, I love when other people cover my songs.
To have the chance to see your music be elevated and to have almost universally positive response to that music, makes me feel better every day. I feel more confident and inspired, and that's fun.
Why wouldn't I help? What good reason do I have as a human being with power and a sense of empathy and morality, why wouldn't I do something?
I wrote the song "Show Me" as a prayer to God asking simple, honest questions about life and death and why there is so much suffering in the world. As I grew with the song I realized I shouldn't limit these questions solely to God; I should ask those questions of others and of myself.
Hip hop is usually a bunch of guys talking to a bunch of guys, in my experience. It's homosocial, not homosexual, in that it's almost always all one gender in a room where it's being created. That locker-room environment has an impact on the language. I think the music suffers 'cause it allows an almost cartoonish level of misogyny.
I've always been curious about how much of our cultural baggage we bring to what and how we read. I suspect we bring a lot, although we like to think we don't.
Let me put it this way: when I read, I learned the world was not as small as my house. And that everybody in my home town was not representative of the way people in the world were raised. And that was what saved me.
Open your mind to what I shall disclose, and hold it fast within you; he who hears, but does not hold what he has heard, learns nothing. Beatrice - Canto V 40-42
Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the '50s were immigrant values even though we weren't immigrants. The greatest thing you could be was a college-educated Negro.
Maybe reading was just a way to make her feel less alone, to keep her company. When you read something you are stopped, the moment is stayed, you can sometimes be there more fully than you can in your real life.
A child must learn early to believe that she is somebody worthwhile, and that she can do many praiseworthy things.
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