Grade 11 · Speech
Lincoln on Labor and Learning
The old general rule was that educated people did not perform manual labor. They managed to eat their bread, leaving the toil of producing it to the uneducated. This was not an insupportable evil to the working bees, so long as the class of drones remained very small. But now, especially in these free States, nearly all are educated—quite too nearly all to leave the labor of the uneducated in any wise adequate to the support of the whole.
From Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society by Abraham Lincoln (1859) · Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, September 30, 1859, Abraham Lincoln (1859)
5 questions
This passage comes with a PlayOwl plan.
Anyone can read the beginning. A plan opens every passage in every grade, with its questions and saved stars for each child. Two passages in every grade stay free.
Try the free passages for Grade 11:
Turn on JavaScript to answer the questions.
More Grade 11 passages
See all- Free Story About 500 words The Scholarship Essay Maren's scholarship essay follows every rule. Her English teacher keeps sending it back with the same four-word question.
- Free Science About 500 words The Science of Memory Why does an all-night study session pass the test and then vanish within a week? The answer lies in how memories are made, kept and found again.
- With a plan Opinion About 600 words Is Space Exploration Worth the Cost? With so many problems on Earth, why spend money exploring space? One writer makes the case, then answers the two strongest objections.
- With a plan Science About 650 words Bringing Back the Mammoth Woolly mammoths vanished thousands of years ago. Some scientists now want to make an animal very like one. What could be done, and should it be?