Children read to learn - even when they are reading fantasy, nonsense, light verse, comics or the copy on cereal packets, they are expanding their minds all the time, enlarging their vocabulary, making discoveries - it is all new to them.
Interpretation
Children's reading, regardless of genre, contributes to their learning and cognitive development.
This quote emphasizes the importance of reading in children's development, highlighting that every genre or type of text they engage with, whether it's fantasy or light verse, plays a crucial role in expanding their vocabulary and stimulating their minds. It points out that even seemingly trivial texts, such as cereal packets, help children discover new concepts and ideas, contributing to their overall learning experience.
In practice
A teacher might use this quote to encourage parents to read with their children, regardless of the material.
Students of reading, writing and common arithmetick . . . Graecian [Greek], Roman, English and American history . . . should be rendered . . . worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.
One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.
International educational exchange is the most significant current project designed to continue the process of humanizing mankind to the point, we would hope, that men can learn to live in peace-eventually even to cooperate in constructive activities rather than compete in a mindless contest of mutual destruction....We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education.
The English language is an arsenal of weapons. If you are going to brandish them without checking to see whether or not they are loaded, you must expect to have them explode in your face from time to time.
A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.
The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.
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