Abraham Lincoln’s letter to his son's teacher

“My son starts school today. It is all going to be strange and new to him for a while and I wish you would treat him gently. It is an adventure that might take him across continents. All adventures that probably include wars, tragedy and sorrow. To live this life will require faith, love and courage.

So dear Teacher, will you please take him by his hand and teach him things he will have to know, teaching him – but gently, if you can. Teach him that for every enemy, there is a friend. He will have to know that all men are not just, that all men are not true. But teach him also that for every scoundrel there is a hero, that for every crooked politician, there is a dedicated leader.

Teach him if you can that 10 cents earned is of far more value than a dollar found. In school, teacher, it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat. Teach him to learn how to gracefully lose, and enjoy winning when he does win.

Teach him to be gentle with people, tough with tough people. Steer him away from envy if you can and teach him the secret of quiet laughter. Teach him if you can – how to laugh when he is sad, teach him there is no shame in tears. Teach him there can be glory in failure and despair in success. Teach him to scoff at cynics.

Teach him if you can the wonders of books, but also give time to ponder the extreme mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun and flowers on a green hill. Teach him to have faith in his own ideas, even if every one tell him they are wrong.

Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd when everyone else is doing it. Teach him to listen to every one, but teach him also to filter all that he hears on a screen of truth and take only the good that comes through.

Teach him to sell his talents and brains to the highest bidder but never to put a price tag on his heart and soul. Let him have the courage to be impatient, let him have the patient to be brave. Teach him to have sublime faith in himself, because then he will always have sublime faith in mankind, in God.

This is the order, teacher but see what best you can do. He is such a nice little boy and he is my son.”

The authenticity of this letter remains unconfirmed.

Essentials of Education

• The intellectuals will accomplish nothing if they fail to integrate themselves with the workers and peasants.
• The educational policy must cultivate a firm and correct political orientation, an industrious and simple style of work, and flexible strategy and tactics. 
• Educational policy must enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture.
• Students and intellectuals should study their specialized subjects and must make progress both ideologically and politically, which means that they should study current events and politics. 
• Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul.
• People have to learn while teaching while serving as teachers. 
• To be a good teacher, one must first be a good pupil. 
• There are many things which cannot be learned from books alone; one must learn from those engaged in production, from the workers, from the poor and lower middle peasants etc.
• Education must serve proletarian politics and must be combined with productive labour. 
• The working people should master knowledge and the intellectuals should become habituated to manual labour.
• Destruction means criticism and repudiation. It involves reasoning things out, which is construction. There is no construction without destruction.
• While students main task is to study, they should in addition to their studies, participate in other things like industrial work, farming and military affairs. 
• The domination of schools by bourgeois intellectuals should by no means be allowed to continue.