Everything hinges on education. Without it, you can't advocate for proper health care, for housing, for a civil rights bill that ensures your rights.
Interpretation
Education is the foundation for advocacy and social change.
In this quote, Susan L. Taylor emphasizes the critical role of education in empowering individuals to advocate for their rights and address social issues such as health care and housing. Without a proper education, people lack the knowledge and skills needed to fight for equality and justice, making education a pivotal element in the pursuit of civil rights and societal advancement.
In practice
During a speech about social justice, you could quote this to underline the importance of education in driving change.
We are here to love, not to judge. I'd been blaming and raging. I certainly wasn't loving my daughter that afternoon as God loves me. God's love doesn't insist on perfection or even good common sense. Why then should I demand more of those I love? With this tiny change in perspective I began to see the need for correction wasn't in my daughter, but in me.
When I joined 'Essence,' I was a young, single mother. I was 24. I hadn't gone to college. I wasn't making any money at 'Essence' - what was it, $500 a month - and I was struggling. So I was always looking down the road, always hoping for a better, you know, tomorrow.
We don't have time to waste. Our communities are crumbling; our children are under siege. Failing schools and a for-profit prison-industrial complex are sucking the life out of black homes and communities. We are not going down like this!
It's hunger. It's homelessness, often. It's underfunded, under-resourced schools. It's abuse beyond the chilling. It's having overwhelmed parents and caregivers. Those are the things that young people are struggling with beyond our view.
We women feel we are here to serve. That's the mistake we make. We may have children, husbands, lovers, bills, responsibility. Those things don't own us, but too often we let them.
Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement,βcall it which you will,βis a book of travels, describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one
There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.
Schooling should not be left to the whim or wealth of village elders. I believe that we should fund all schools in the U.S. with our national resources. All these kids are being educated to be Americans, not citizens of Minneapolis or San Francisco.
The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
In the early 1970s in Atlanta, I attended what had formerly been an all-white school but had become a black school after integration and white flight. Perhaps because of this, the teachers created a curriculum that included a focus on African American literature and history year-round, not just in February.
Children don't need much advice but they really do need to be listened to and not just with half an ear.
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