He was one of the first revolutionary writers on education. And it's amazing how many of his lessons are timeless and still hold true to today. He talked about a lot of the same concepts that Obama touched upon in his campaign.
Some of the important ones to note are as follows:
"An educated country will always be free."
"Education should be so common among women that the one who has it is not noticed nor does she herself notice it."
"Knowing how to read is knowing how to walk. Knowing how to write is knowing how to ascend. Feet, arms, wings, all these are given to man by his first and most humble schoolbooks."
And while I can't find the exact quote he said that above all it was important to always be loyal and loving to one's country - he went so far to say that to not love one's country was the WORST thing you could do - the greatest sin. I reflected on that for a while - like Rizal a man who lived a majority of his life in exile Martí still felt such love for his country. I think that this election has brought many people together and has inspired so many to really LOVE their country for the first time in some cases.
And yet - with the passage of Prop 8 it shows us we still have a long way to go.
Martí spent much of his time living in the USA too.
He comments upon "the excessive covetousness in the United States took away the grace of youth and beauty of character. Moreover, in many of the universities there was more ostentation than knowledge. Those institutions that were the favorites of the rich consumed the students' money, through thousands of dollars spent for personal vanity, and diverted them from the pursuit of learning."
That's SO TRUE.
He stressed that Latin America had a lot to learn from the USA but shouldn't become that same America of the US.
He stressed that education needed to be removed from religion - as it was "the only one [type of education] that could insure liberty of conscience of both teachers and pupils:
One has no right to teach the Catholic religion, nor an anti-Catholic religion, in schools; either honor is not one of the religious virtues, or education will be sufficiently religious if it is honest. That, yes, implacably honest. It is not proper for a teacher to cliam as the only true religion, one which is held in doubt by the majority of the poeople, even if he shares it, or offend a religion to which, since the student follows it in free use of his judgement, he already has a right. Or is the Catholic Church so vapid and empty that it will crumble with the study of Nature and teh teaching of human virtues? or is it, perhaps, that it is against these virtues, that it fears them? Or has it come to so little that, although it be a divine doctrine, and therefore eternal, as its supporters affirm, this work of centuries cannot be sustained even by the prestige of tradition, or the influence exerted by solemnly lit churches on the imagination and the senses, the terror aroused in souls by the threat of damnation, its practice and reverence in all homes, or with the permission to teach its cult in schools to all boys and girls whose parents ask for it?"
Sound familiar? Not so far-fetched that he was coined with the title "Maestro" (Teacher) over 100 years past.
I'm in awe. Trying to keep my mind active post-graduation.
Thought that was cute ^_^
