Public School Quotes - Page 2

• I have realized why corrupt politicians do nothing to improve the quality of public school education. They are terrified of educated voters.

  Miriam

  School, Quality, Voters

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• Public Schools too often fail because they are shielded from the very force that improves performance and sparks innovation in nearly every other human enterprise - competition.

  Bob Lutz

  School, Competition, Innovation

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• Public school felt like prison - cinderblock walls, fluorescent lights, metal lockers. It was so sterile and unstimulating.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Wall, School, Light

  "State trouper". Interview with Lynsey Hanley, www.theguardian.com. November 20, 2005.

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• I went to Paterson Public School No. 6. At the time, it was the worst school in the city. Ain't nobody want their kids to go to School 6; it was that bad. But it was where we lived. If you grow up in a bad area, there are bad things around it.

  Fetty Wap

  Growing Up, School, Kids

  Interview with Trevor Noah, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 8, 2016.

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• I have an absolutely unshakable faith in kids, grounded in the fact that I worked for three years in one of the worst public schools in Baltimore, with kids most people would write off because of their backgrounds. But, when I set high expectations, at the end of the day, these kids went from scoring at the bottom on standardized tests, to scoring at the top, despite their unfortunate circumstances.

  Michelle Rhee

  Writing, School, Kids

  Source: aalbc.com

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• That should be the goal, is that every kid in every neighborhood, despite whatever challenges they may face, are getting a great education in our public schools.

  Michelle Rhee

  School, Kids, Goal

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The first generation of school reformers I talk about - nineteenth century education reformer Horace Mann, Catharine Beecher - they are true believers in their vision for public education. They have a missionary zeal. And this to me connects them a lot to folks today, whether it's education activist Campbell Brown or former D.C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. It's a righteous sense, a reform push that's driven by a strong belief in a particular set of solutions.

  Dana Goldstein

  Strong, School, Vision

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Now, I have nothing against the public school system as it is presently organized, once you allow the humor of its basic assumption about how it is possible to teach things to children.

  Shirley Jackson

  Children, School, Assumption

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• A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument for tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective.’ (1923)

  John Gresham Machen

  School, Mean, Free Education

  John Gresham Machen (1923). “Christianity and Liberalism”, p.14, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• It is not envy or malice, as so many people think, but utter despair that has persuaded many educational reformers to recommend the abolition of the English public schools.

  Peter Medawar

  Educational, School, Thinking

  "The art of the soluble". Book by Peter Medawar, 1967.

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• Public schools are government-established, politician- and bureaucrat-controlled, fully politicized, taxpayer-supported, authoritarian socialist institutions. In fact, the public-school system is one of the purest examples of socialism existing in America.

  Tom L. Johnson

  School, Government, America

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• I hope that schools have changed since I was a little girl. My memory of the teaching of the public schools is that it showed the brutal incomprehension of children.

  Isadora Duncan

  Girl, Children, Memories

  Isadora Duncan (2013). “My Life (Revised and Updated)”, p.5, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I have been criticized throughout the course of my career for placing too much faith in the reliability of children's narratives; but I have almost always found that children are a great deal more reliable in telling us what actually goes on in public school than many of the adult experts who develop policies that shape their destinies.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Children, School, Destiny

  Jonathan Kozol (2005). “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”, p.12, Broadway Books

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• Our teachers at the public school level are the most underpaid for the importance of their job in America.

  Dean Smith

  Teacher, Jobs, School

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• Personally, I had a great education. My mum was a trained teacher, a Montessori teacher, and I know that I could not have written 'Eragon' if I had gone into a public school system because I would have just been too busy attending classes and doing homework - I wouldn't have had the time to write.

  Christopher Paolini

  Teacher, Writing, School

  "Christopher Paolini: 'Inspiration strikes about once every blue moon'" by Michelle Pauli, www.theguardian.com. November 16, 2011.

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• The public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period. They’re operated as holding pens—miniature jails, really. It’s only when black children start breaking out of their pens and bothering white people that society even pays any attention to the issue of whether these children are being educated.

  Barack Obama

  Children, School, Cities

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance”, p.258, Broadway Books

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• We all know that great leaders can create great successes...success for the Chicago public education fund is to bring great leaders into Chicago's public schools.

  Kenneth C. Griffin

  School, Leader, Chicago

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• The public school system is damned. Let me tell you how radical I am. Christian students should be in Christian schools. If you have to sell your car, live in a smaller house, or work a night job, put your child in Christian schools. If you can't afford it, homeschool.

  Jerry Falwell

  Christian, Jobs, Children

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• At my public school I had hated every other face for fear the owner was a lord, at university, I was to court the rich while doubting whether there should be great inequalities between incomes.

  Henry Green

  School, Doubt, Income

  Henry Green (1940). “Pack my bag: a self-portrait”

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• My education began in the public schools of Wilmington. During most of these years, from about age 10, I also worked at some job or other after school, on weekends, and in the summer months.

  Daniel Nathans

  Summer, Jobs, School

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• There was one public school for boys, and one for girls, but Jewish children were admitted in limited numbers - only ten to a hundred; and even the lucky ones had their troubles.

  Mary Antin

  Girl, Children, School

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• One of the most devastating enemies of the family is radical sex education in the public school. It is more explicit than necessary for the good of the child. Too much sex education too soon causes undue curiosity and obsession with sex.

  Beverly LaHaye

  Sex, Children, School

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• Your children will go to public school and they will be trained for somewhere around 15,000 hours in ungodly secular thought. And then they'll go to Sunday school and they'll color a picture of Noah's ark. And you think that's going to stand against the lies that they are being told?

  Paul Washer

  Children, Lying, School

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• It is eminently possible to have a market-based economy that requires no such brutality and demands no such ideological purity. A free market in consumer products can coexist with free public health care, with public schools, with a large segment of the economy -- like a national oil company -- held in state hands. It's equally possible to require corporations to pay decent wages, to respect the right of workers to form unions, and for governments to tax and redistribute wealth so that the sharp inequalities that mark the corporatist state are reduced. Markets need not be fundamentalist.

  Naomi Klein

  School, Hands, Oil

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• Going to school is not the same as going shopping. Parents should not be burdened with locating a suitable school for their child. They should be able to take their child to the neighborhood public school as a matter of course and expect that it has well-educated teachers and a sound educational program.

  Diane Ravitch

  Teacher, Children, Educational

  "Education and the election: it's still all about the money" Lucy Clark, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2016.

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