"America's future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what he is taught; hence we must watch what we teach, and how we live"
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A century later, Addams still lands the punch: the country isn’t steered first by presidents or tycoons, but by the mundane machinery of daily life. By naming the home and the school, she drags “America’s future” out of lofty patriotic abstraction and pins it to two institutions that feel private, even natural. That’s the point. If we accept that children “become largely what [they are] taught,” then education stops being a neutral service and becomes a nation-shaping power struggle.
The subtext is a rebuttal to the comforting fiction that values are transmitted automatically, as if citizenship just happens. Addams implies the opposite: every lesson plan and dinner-table comment is political formation. Her “hence” is moral leverage. It turns a descriptive claim about socialization into a demand for vigilance and accountability. Notably, she doesn’t only police curriculum; she pairs “what we teach” with “how we live.” Hypocrisy becomes a civic risk. Kids learn ideology as much from adult behavior as from textbooks, so the real syllabus is the culture parents and teachers model.
Context matters. Addams, a Hull House founder in the Progressive Era, watched waves of immigrant families navigate industrial poverty, labor exploitation, and nativist suspicion. Schools were battlegrounds for assimilation, class discipline, and democratic possibility. Her line reads as both warning and strategy: if you want reform, stop pretending society is changed solely through laws. Build the future where it’s actually manufactured - in classrooms and kitchens, through example.
The subtext is a rebuttal to the comforting fiction that values are transmitted automatically, as if citizenship just happens. Addams implies the opposite: every lesson plan and dinner-table comment is political formation. Her “hence” is moral leverage. It turns a descriptive claim about socialization into a demand for vigilance and accountability. Notably, she doesn’t only police curriculum; she pairs “what we teach” with “how we live.” Hypocrisy becomes a civic risk. Kids learn ideology as much from adult behavior as from textbooks, so the real syllabus is the culture parents and teachers model.
Context matters. Addams, a Hull House founder in the Progressive Era, watched waves of immigrant families navigate industrial poverty, labor exploitation, and nativist suspicion. Schools were battlegrounds for assimilation, class discipline, and democratic possibility. Her line reads as both warning and strategy: if you want reform, stop pretending society is changed solely through laws. Build the future where it’s actually manufactured - in classrooms and kitchens, through example.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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