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.
History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.
My denial and irresponsible attitude about asthma put me at great risk and caused me so much needless suffering. My hope is that the kids I talk to learn to open up about their asthma, become educated about their condition, and seek help.
When you look at human rights, look at gender, and the rights of girls for education in the world - that are crucial issues - some are saying 'Oh, these are western values.' But these are really universal values.
To be a teacher is my greatest work of art.
Organizing facts in terms of principles and ideas from which they may be inferred is the only known way of reducing the quick rate of loss of human memory.
The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things-the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.
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