If you ask a ten-year-old girl what she wants to do when she grows up and a fourteen-year-old girl what she wants to be when she grows up, in many cases, the older child will have a much less free sense of what's possible.
Interpretation
As children grow older, their dreams and aspirations often become constrained by societal expectations.
This quote highlights how the curiosity and open-mindedness of childhood can dwindle as children age, often replaced by a more limited view of possibilities. The contrast between the aspirations of a ten-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old girl reflects the societal pressures and experiences that can shape a child's perception of their future, indicating that growing up can sometimes mean losing the freedom to dream boldly.
In practice
A teacher could use this quote to encourage students to keep dreaming big despite societal expectations.
Nobody would know me from my own description of myself; which is why, when called upon (rarely, I grant) to provide an account, I tailor it, I adapt, I try to provide an outline that can, in some way, correlate to the outline that people understand me to have -- that, I suppose, I actually have, at this point. But who I am in my head, very few people really get to see that. Almost none. It's the most precious gift I can give, to bring her out of hiding.
Years ago, I worked in a newspaper office, and there were men that would have fits of temper, and it was just accepted that that's who they were, and everyone would laugh about it, but if a woman got upset or angry, something wasn't right: she was 'hysterical' or 'a little unhinged.' It didn't have the same sort of connotation at all.
We think that - as kids, you know - that kids make up stories and live in a sort of fictional place, but that, as grown-ups, we tell the truth and live in fact. But, of course, the reality is we take the facts that we know, and then we fill in all the blanks.
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
The best learning happens in real life with real problems and real people and not in classrooms.
Children get smashed for hours on some strictly limited aspect of the Great Big Everything, the Universe, such as water or snow or mud or colors or rocks.
Those 62 million girls who are not being educated around the world impact my life in Washington, D.C., in the United States of America. Because if we aren't empowering and providing the skills and the resources to half of our population, then we're not realizing our full potential as a society, as mankind.
I want to go back to my country to help other girls. We need to support girls to see other possibilities for themselves, to have a vision for their own future.
If you're going to binge, literature is definitely the way to do it.
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