Help with a quote.

Applying to College
1

<p>What does Helen Keller mean when she said that “college isn’t the place to go for ideas?”</p>

2

<p>Would you like a 150, 300, or 500 word answer?</p>

3

<p>Google is the answer for everything :)</p>

4

<p>umm…150…lol.</p>

<p>Google only gives you a list of quotes when you enter in the search terms.</p>

<p>I’m thinking if I can use this for one of my essays.</p>

5

<p>Lol you made it sound like this was a prompt for an essay for an app.</p>

<p>Personally, I would pick a quote that you can explain for an essay.</p>

6

<p>I remember this quote from three years ago because I gave my first impromptu speech about it. At that time, and currently, I interpret Keller’s words as the framework in which students gain education through college actually impedes the individuals ability to creatively imagine new ideas. If so, then this quote wouldn’t be good for the essay. However, someone else told me that the quote actually indicates that college is not a good place to go to for ideas to be given to you, but a place to go to to think of ideas for yourself. If so, then I can actually write about it.</p>

7

<p>Tip: When selecting a quote for your essay, choose one that means something to you and that you can understand. If others have to interpret the quote for you, that’s a big hint that you shouldn’t use it.</p>

8

<p>^Good advice. Seriously, if you yourself do not understand it, your message will not come across as strongly.</p>

9

<p>Fine fine. I am not going to use this quote in my essay. Can somebody just tell me what it means?</p>

10

<p>The quote by itself is meaningless. When I Googled, I found it in context, I learnd that it related to Helen Keller’s work as a radical with the union Industrial Workers of the World. When I saw this on a website, I thought it was a joke – Helen Keller a radical, and even the target of an FBI investigation. But I looked into Amazon books, and found a book about this aspect of her, too.</p>

<p>Anyway, all is a good example of why not to use a quote in an application unless you fully understand it.</p>

<p>"“No!”–an emphatic, triumphant, almost terrifying denial–"college isn’t the place to go for any ideas.
“I thought I was going to college to be educated,” she resumed as she composed herself, and laughing more lightly, “I am an example of the education dealt out to present generations. It’s a deadlock. Schools seem to love the dead past and live in it.” </p>

<p>“But you know, don’t you,” I pleaded through Mrs. Macy and for her,“that the intentions of your teachers were of the best.” </p>

<p>“But they amounted to nothing,” she countered. “They did not teach me about things as they are today, or about the vital problems of the people. They taught me Greek drama and Roman history, the celebrated achievements of war rather than those of the hearoes of peace. For instance, there were a dozen chapters on war where there were a few paragraphs about the inventors, and it is this overemphasis of the cruelties of life that breeds the wrong ideal. Education taught me that it was a finer thing to be a Napoleon than to create a new potato.”
<a href=“http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/16_01_16.htm[/url]”>http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/16_01_16.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;