Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
Mary WollstonecraftRead
Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.
Interpretation
Society significantly influences the education and development of individuals.
In this quote, Mary Wollstonecraft emphasizes that the surrounding society plays a crucial role in shaping the education and character of both men and women. It highlights the importance of societal norms and beliefs in the learning process, suggesting that one's upbringing and external environment are key factors in personal development.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of education, this quote can illustrate how societal norms impact learning.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives; - that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.
But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!
The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.
Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.
Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!
Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed... It doesn't give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.
Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.
Whatever may be the merits of a religious system, its effects upon the mass of mankind must depend in an important degree upon its teachers. All instruction and all truth, except simple mathematical truth, is modified by the medium through which it is conveyed.
The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.
From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.
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