What's done to children, they will do to society.
Interpretation
Children's experiences shape their future actions and impact society.
This quote by Karl A. Menninger emphasizes the profound influence that childhood experiences have on individuals, suggesting that the way children are treated will ultimately reflect in their behavior toward society as adults. It serves as a reminder that nurturing and educating children positively can lead to a more compassionate and productive society.
In practice
During a community meeting discussing educational reforms, I quoted Menninger to emphasize the importance of investing in child welfare.
People repeat in adult life emotions they experience in childhood. Many of the people whom I spent the last 30 or 40 years treating at so much per minute wouldn't have needed any treatment at all if they had had the right care as children.
We have come to see that just as the child must learn to love wisely, so he must learn to hate expeditiously, to turn destructive tendencies away from himself toward enemies that actually threaten him rather than toward the friendly and the defenseless, the more usual victims of destructive energy.
Love cures people - both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.
We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do.
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.
Our lives are shaped by those who love us as well as those who refuse to love us.
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
When you're learning, especially to write, unless you're some incredibly gifted writer, a young Malcom Gladwell, say, you need to be imitating people. You need to be imitating how they make their work, how they structure it, how they design the pieces. It gives you chops; it gives you moves.
I always tell kids, you have two eyes and one mouth. Keep two open and one closed. You never learn anything if you're the one talking.
Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.
To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
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