David McCullough Quotes on Education (5 Quotes)

Reading history is good for all of us, he says, not surprisingly, perhaps, but his rationale is a fresh, somewhat bracing thought If you know history, you know that there is no such thing as a self-made man or self-made woman. We are shaped by people we have never met. Yes, reading history will make you a better citizen and more appreciative of the law, and of freedom, and of how the economy works or doesn't work, but it is also an immense pleasurethe way art is, or music is, or poetry is. And it's never stale.

I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.

To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.

If something didn't work, he'd try something else. If something else didn't work, he'd try something else again. Over and over, and always learning from his mistakes. Learning the job on the job, at a terrible cost, to be sure.

Because of No Child Left Behind, sadly, history is being put on the back burner or taken off the stove altogether in many or most schools, in favor of math and reading,