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.
In a way, math isn't the art of answering mathematical questions, it is the art of asking the right questions, the questions that give you insight, the ones that lead you in interesting directions, the ones that connect with lots of other interesting questions -the ones with beautiful answers.
The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps drumming the genius part out. The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.
The benefits of prison education go beyond lowering recidivism rates and increasing post-release employment. It can also rekindle a sense of purpose and confidence.
For the mind and the imagination, bookstores aren't enough, college courses aren't enough, the Internet isn't enough. Those resources are all governed by the tastes and needs of the moment. Only libraries take the long view, quietly shelving the unused with the used, knowing that one of these days the two categories will be reversed by a student's discovery of those hitherto undisturbed volumes whose contents will unsettle the learned world.
A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.
We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.
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