Had I the power, I would scatter libraries over the whole land as the sower sows his wheatfield.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the desire to spread knowledge widely and accessibly, similar to how seeds are scattered for growth.
Horace Mann emphasizes the importance of education and knowledge by comparing the distribution of libraries to the act of sowing seeds in a field. Just as a sower spreads seeds to ensure a bountiful harvest, Mann wishes to see libraries, symbols of knowledge and learning, scattered across the land so that everyone has access to education and the opportunity for growth.
In practice
In a speech advocating for community funding for libraries, this quote can emphasize the importance of education access.
Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.
Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.
Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
Read a lot. Read broadly... Tell stories to your friends, and pay attention to when they get bored... Write a lot.
A good teacher can never be fixed in a routine... each moment requires a sensitive mind that is constantly changing and constantly adapting. A teacher must never impose this student to fit his favourite pattern; a good teacher functions as a pointer, exposing his student's vulnerability and causing him to explore both internally and finally integrating himself with his being. Martial art should not be passed out indiscriminately.
September 11 We thought we'd outdistanced history Told our children it was nowhere near; Even when history struck Columbine, It didn't happen here. We took down the maps in the classroom, And when they were safely furled, We told the young what they wanted to hear, That they were immune from a menacing world. But history isn't a folded-up map, Or an unread textbook tome; Now we know history's a fireman's child Waiting at home alone.
Teaching like any truly human activity emerges from one's inwardness.
The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading.
If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.
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