Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools - intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it - this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.
Interpretation
We shape men by focusing on education that develops intelligence and empathy.
W. E. B. Du Bois emphasizes the importance of education in shaping individuals, particularly men, by instilling intelligence, empathy, and a broad understanding of the world. He argues that true education should prepare individuals for life by fostering a deeper comprehension of human relationships and societal dynamics, ultimately leading to a more enlightened and connected existence.
In practice
In a graduation speech to emphasize the value of education in shaping future leaders.
Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the Negro found public opinion determined to 'keep him in his place.'
School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
For most people, it is enough for the world to know that they aspire. The world does not ask what their aspirations are, trusting that those aspirations are for the best and greatest things. But with regard to the Negroes in America, there is a feeling that their aspirations in some way are not consistent with the great ideals.
For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder.
The chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime.
This assumption that the blue collar crowd is not supposed to read it, or a farmer in his overalls is not to read poetry, seems to be dangerous if not tragic.
A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.
The content of most textbooks is perishable, but the tools of self-directedness serve one well over time.
When we make college more affordable, we make the American dream more achievable.
Once you've got a child to the point that they've discovered books, they're safe. There's a world of the imagination that when they're hurt or upset, they can move into, and it is wonderful.
Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.
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