"Teach success before teaching responsibility. Teach them to believe in themselves. Teach them to think, 'I'm not stupid'. No child wants to fail. Everyone wants to succeed"
About this Quote
Al Green’s line lands like advice from someone who’s watched talent get misnamed as trouble. He’s flipping the usual order of adult expectations: we love to demand “responsibility” from kids who haven’t yet been given the conditions to feel capable. The intent is bluntly practical. Before you lecture a child about consequences, you teach them what it feels like to win at something small and real. Success becomes the proof that responsibility isn’t just punishment in nicer packaging.
The subtext sits in that jagged phrase: “I’m not stupid.” That’s not a motivational poster; it’s damage control. Green is pointing at the quiet, cumulative humiliation baked into classrooms, families, and systems that label kids early and then act shocked when they stop trying. When a child internalizes failure as identity, responsibility turns into another stage for shame. When a child experiences competence, responsibility reads differently: not as surveillance, but as agency.
Context matters because Green isn’t speaking as an academic theorist; he’s a musician whose career embodies reinvention, discipline, and the messy relationship between gift and expectation. In Black American cultural life especially, “responsibility” has often been code for respectability demands placed on young people long before they’re offered safety, patience, or second chances. His point is less sentimental than it sounds: confidence isn’t a bonus. It’s infrastructure.
The closing lines reject the lazy myth that kids “choose” failure. They don’t crave collapse; they adapt to a world that keeps handing it to them.
The subtext sits in that jagged phrase: “I’m not stupid.” That’s not a motivational poster; it’s damage control. Green is pointing at the quiet, cumulative humiliation baked into classrooms, families, and systems that label kids early and then act shocked when they stop trying. When a child internalizes failure as identity, responsibility turns into another stage for shame. When a child experiences competence, responsibility reads differently: not as surveillance, but as agency.
Context matters because Green isn’t speaking as an academic theorist; he’s a musician whose career embodies reinvention, discipline, and the messy relationship between gift and expectation. In Black American cultural life especially, “responsibility” has often been code for respectability demands placed on young people long before they’re offered safety, patience, or second chances. His point is less sentimental than it sounds: confidence isn’t a bonus. It’s infrastructure.
The closing lines reject the lazy myth that kids “choose” failure. They don’t crave collapse; they adapt to a world that keeps handing it to them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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