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 Children are all foreigners. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
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In what context was it said? "Foreigners are all children" seems as good to me.
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Odd this shows up now with all crap going on at our southern border. I'm not buying it. Send them packing.
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"Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such. We cannot understand their speech or their mode of life, and so our Education is remote and accidental and not closely applied to the fact." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals.
That is the context. It is dangerous to take a sentence out of context because then you can imagine things that aren't there, things that the author never intended to transmit.
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Zippy"
Oddly enough, I've been saying the very same thing for years. Come August 24th, I am very much looking forward to celebrating the 200th anniversary of the burning of the 'White House'.
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Children have so much to learn--as do we all! We are all foreigners in an alien land--none of us made the land we live in, and we all have to conform to the rules laid down by others, in order to live in this mutually alien world of ours.
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Thank you, blue elf. Now I understand. You are right on importance of context. Still, foreigners are sometimes treated as children, so my version is also possible. Sincerely, Madas 
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All children are foreigners in the beginning but they are being molded according to their parents' view of the world, their beliefs, traditions and opinions.
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The little children run naked in the cold... The aged shiver for lack of winter clothes...
Say, m'Lady, does it not move you strangely, we the children's cry, tonight when, like the drifting snow, memory piles up on memory?
What have we here?
Elephants.
Bulls.
Dragons.
Spiders.
Cats.
Aliens.
PREDATORS.
etc...
No.
Then.
Mine.
Wish.
May this beacon guide us, the foreigners, to your Throne...
Justin
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I thought of it in the context. Many grown ups forgot completely what it is like to be a child so they treat grown ups at foreigners. They do not understand how to educate them as they do not realise how much children know at a given age. This is not true of many parents and some grandparents.
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And became they like little children, and nobody understood them, and they asked “Why?” again and again, and no one answered them... Sad story with, presumably, a happy ending.
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I don't known what context he said like this.May be he might have thought we don't understand their language.they will not tell lies
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Every generation has its own culture and believe. We have ours; but how much we understand the younger one?
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What about this twist: usual order in sentence would be ALL CHILDREN ARE FOREIGNERS but the meaning of CHILDREN ARE ALL FOREIGNERS seems to me have a shade of different meaning
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Thanx all for this discussion. I also think that this quote is about helping each other in order to help one's self.
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I know my child is a "foreigner" who thinks I'm loony tunes as an adult. But it appears that Emerson meant this to describe why schooling (not education in my book - two vastly different enterprises) was so ineffectual. There is probably some truth to what he said as the Rockefeller's and Carnegie's scientifically engineered schooling operation didn't start in earnest until he had passed away. I absolutely think this is a key reason why most adults don't instantaneously recognize the absurdity of modern day schooling, though. Search out John Taylor Gatto for a person who advocates for Human Based Education, not Rockefeller based operant conditioned schooling.
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In fact children are the loving angels. They are all after all the by-products of the elders' love-making.. you know!
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blue_elf wrote:"Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such. We cannot understand their speech or their mode of life, and so our Education is remote and accidental and not closely applied to the fact." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals.
That is the context. It is dangerous to take a sentence out of context because then you can imagine things that aren't there, things that the author never intended to transmit. Thank you for searching and providing the context, a thankless task sometimes. Unfortunately, it is also dangerous to let some people read from Emerson with the kind of "remote and accidental Education" he was talking about.
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