“My son, gather instruction from thy youth up: so shalt thou find wisdom till thine old age.”
Ben Sira, c. 180 BC · Jerusalem scribe, author of the Book of Sirach
Chapter 4
On Teaching the Young
“If a man keeps cherishing his old knowledge, so as continually to be acquiring new, he may be a teacher of others.”
Confucius, c. 500 BC · Chinese teacher whose sayings were gathered by his students
“The old are dedicated to the service of the young, as their teachers and advisers, and the young in turn regard them with love and reverence.”
Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa), 1911 · Santee Dakota physician and writer
“It falls to grandmothers and grandfathers to repeat the time-hallowed tales with dignity and authority, and so lead the child into an inheritance of stored-up wisdom.”
Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa), 1911 · Santee Dakota physician and writer
“The old do not roast a hot stone and place it in a child's hand.”
Akan proverb, 1916 · Asante, Ghana, collected in the field before 1916
“Teaching sons and grandsons, mind you teach them a trade. Plant the mulberry, not many flowers.”
Chinese proverb, 1875 · collected in north China in the nineteenth century
“The great and prevailing idea that seemed to take possession of every one was to prepare himself to lift up the people at his home.”
Booker T. Washington, 1901 · American educator, writing of his fellow students at Hampton
When retired volunteers were placed in Baltimore elementary schools to tutor and mentor, the children gained and the volunteers gained too, reporting more activity, more strength, and wider social worlds.
Linda Fried and colleagues, 2004 · initial evaluation of the Experience Corps intergenerational program
Teenagers who could tell stories about their parents' own younger years showed higher wellbeing than those who could only tell stories about themselves. What is passed on matters as much as what is lived.
Robyn Fivush, Jennifer Bohanek and Widaad Zaman, 2011 · study of personal and intergenerational narratives in adolescence
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