Now, one of the ways in which young people are likely to go astray, especially when they first go away from home to school, is in yielding to a temptation to spend their time with persons who have mean and low dispositions; persons whom…
Booker T. Washington
The Public Record
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.
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We can fill your heads with knowledge, and we can train your hands to work with skill, but unless all this training of head and hand is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing.
Would they approve, or should I be ashamed to let them know that I have done this thing?" If you will ask yourselves these questions day by day, I think you will find that you will get a great deal of assistance from them in the shaping of…
There is no better way to test an act than to ask yourself the question: "What would my father or my mother think of this?
I think that as a general thing you can judge pretty accurately what a person is going to amount to in life by the way he or she acts during the first year or two after leaving home.
I think there is no more important or more critical time in a person's life than when he or she leaves home for the first time, to enter school, or to go to work, or to go into business.
Can we educate your consciences so that you will do certain things, not because it is the rule that they should be done, but because they should be done?
Can we educate a class of girls here who will not be satisfied when sweeping their rooms to make the middle of the rooms look clean, but leave a trail of dirt in the comers and under the furniture?
Can we so educate a group of students that there will be in every one of them a conscience on which we can depend.
The general problem we have to work out here, and work it out with fear and trembling, is:--Can we educate the individual conscience?
In plain words, then, the problem we must work out here is not:--Can you master algebra, or literature?
When I see how well he does his work here, notwithstanding the fact that he is shut up here in prison, I believe that he is an honest man and deserves his freedom.