4
" Novels and stories are renderings of life; they cannot only keep us company, but admonish us, point us in new directions, or give us the courage to stay a given course. They can offer us kinsmen, kinswomen, comrades, advisors — offer us other eyes through which we might see ... Every...student...will all too quickly be beyond schooling, will be out there making a living and, too, just plain living — that is, trying to find and offer to others the affection and love that give purpose to our time spent here....[Characters] can be cautionary figures...who give us pause and help us in the private moments when we try to find our own bearings "
― Robert Coles , The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination
7
" We are, obviously, creatures of language, those who are equipped distinctively to ask and wonder, to try to sort out: creatures of consciousness thoroughly aware that there is an end to this gift of life, that dust does indeed return to dust, hence time is a hauntingly finite possession. No wonder then, that we summon words to the task of explanation--an attempted explanation of what has been, what is, what might be, what ought to be. No wonder, too, we call upon words to represent ourselves, divert ourselves, humor ourselves, instruct ourselves, extend ourselves imaginatively, through our stories and more stories, told to one another from childhood through our last days, and told to us on paper by certain men and women who have turned an aspect of their humanity into a professional calling. "
― Robert Coles
18
" We are nothing to the white people; we are a few Hopis, but they are Americans, millions of them. My father told me that their leader, whoever he is, ends his speech by saying that God is on their side; and then he shakes his fist and says to all the other nations: You had better pay attention, because we are big, and we will shoot to kill, if you don’t watch out. My mother says all the big countries are like that, but I only know this one. We belong to it, that is what the government of the United States says. They come here, the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] people, and they give us their orders. This law says . . . another law says . . . and soon there will be a new law. In case we have any objections, they have soldiers, they have planes. We see the jets diving high in the sky. The clouds try to get out of the way, but they don’t move fast enough. The water tries to escape to the ocean, but can only go at its own speed. "
― Robert Coles , The Political Life of Children
19
" We don't need cameras here; we have enough trouble controlling our eyes! I waste my time looking and not seeing. If a camera helped us to
see, we would be better off-but it would not be us, seeing. A camera distracts you. It makes you less of a person. Words are even worse; they make birds Ay away, and they make us dizzy with noise. Who can pay attention to the world while someone chatters? The books of the Anglos are as noisy as their planes overhead. My mother says that the books fill up our head with words, and take over our eyes, too. We end up seeing what the words told us about. We stop seeing; the noise of the words takes over. I have a cousin who is a New Hopi; he went to a BIA school, and lived with the Anglos in Albuquerque. He came back to us and said that he doesn't look at the mesa anymore. He doesn't watch the clouds, see them meeting, leaving each other, doing a dance for us. He thinks about them; he talks to himself about them. He wishes his head could be quiet, the way it used to be. Stick with the Anglos, and you have a noisy head! "
― Robert Coles , Doing Documentary Work
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" Then he told me this country is what’s made him good, because he had a lot of trouble with his own daddy, and they fought like hell, and his mom would just cry and cry, and she was weak-willed, and whatever her old man wanted and said, she’d go along. But my daddy took argument with his daddy and there was lots of trouble. I mean, my daddy was the first one in his family to call a nigger Mr. and call a nigger Mrs., and he’s been their best friend in this part of town, and they know it. You want to know how he got to be their friend? I’ll tell you: through being in the army, and through realizing that’s what America is all about, including our state of Mississippi! The Stars and Stripes, they’re meant to be for everyone, daddy says. He saw a colored man save a white man’s life over in ‘the Nam,’ and he’s never forgotten what he saw. He says this country is way bigger than any damn problem we have. "
― Robert Coles , The Political Life of Children
