TV doesn't allow Deep Understanding

Image via Wikipedia

"Television can’t sit still.  In fact, it can’t even slow down, which makes any sort of deep understanding or involvement in issues almost impossible because the average person requires time to contemplate issues like education or the economy or the environment or health care in order to fully understand them.  And that’s the problem.  Because what most people don’t realize is that contemplating or reflecting deeply gets you to insights that you can never get to if you’re just rushing through a question or an issue or from one topic to the next."

- Gordon J.H. Leenders. May Not Appear Exactly As Shown. pg 92

The Magic is in the Book

"It’s better to transmit these nursery rhymes . . . with the aid of a book, so that the value and authority of the book are present from the start, and so that the magic remains in the book."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 156

Parents, please make sure to read to your kids when they are young so that they can appreciate the magic that is in a book.

What a great message!

Children Understand Narrative

"And though equally natural and native to the expanding human mind, the narrative comes first, has spiritual priority. Very young children love and demand stories, and can understand complex maters presented as stories, when their powers of comprehending general concepts, paradigms, are almost non-existent. It is this narrative or symbolic power which gives a sense of the world—a concrete reality in the imaginative form of symbol and story—where abstract thought can provide nothing at all. A child follows the Bible before he follows Euclid. Not because the Bible is simpler (the reverse might be said), but because it is cast in a symbolic and narrative mode."

- Oliver Sacks. The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Clinical Tales. HarperCollins: New York, 1985. pg 183-184

Doesn't Cost You Anything

"There are libraries, the Internet. It doesn't cost you anything to educate yourself."

- Joe Peterson, character on Little Mosque on the Prairie

This what Joe said to his friend who was surprised to hear that Joe had the answer to a question he asked.

This is a great quote for a few reasons.

# 1 - the character who spoke it seems to be a bit of airhead.
# 2 - we should remember not to judge people
# 3 - it is amazing what people really know
# 4 - we can all educate ourselves at no cost