Lincoln

I don't like to apologize for not blogging, but I will apologize now that I have no funnies to blog lately.  This post is definitely not embarrassing like the previous few, but it's not funny.

Several weeks ago I gave an assignment to my students to explain what they thought the following quote from Abraham Lincoln meant, in their own words.

"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free."

Some of them did quite poorly on this assignment and didn't take it seriously at all.  I did, however, get a few that I thought were poignant and beautiful (all punctuation is theirs).

From Abbie: "What I think it means is that Americans are all ready free, but slaves live in America and are Americans and are not free.  So, if Americans all of them black and white are free, they give freedom to the real America"

From Courtney: "By giving freedom to one race, we are really giving freedom to all man kind, because we are all the same."

And my favorite, from Martin: "I think by giving freedom to the people who were slaves well for example if it was like this umm the slaves were like the ones working and the others were like inside the whole time and never did anything.  So the slaves got freedom and the people who were free had been free to go outside to do work that's is how the frees got way more free by working and not being lazy that is what I think."

Can we talk about this for a minute?  I definitely wasn't looking for this answer, but the concept is absolutely astounding.  To this kid, it's in work that we are made more free.  I'm going to leave you now to interpret as you will.