Public Education Quotes - Page 3

• The public library is a center of public happiness first, of public education next.

  John Cotton Dana

  Library, Next, Firsts

  John Cotton Dana (2012). “A Library Primer”, p.16, tredition

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• If charter schools are not more successful on average than the public schools they replace, what is accomplished by demolishing public education? What is the rationale for authorizing for-profit charters or charter management organizations with high-paid executives, since their profits and high salaries are paid by taxpayers' dollars?

  Diane Ravitch

  School, Successful, Average

  Diane Ravitch (2013). “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools”, p.219, Vintage

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• I think Democrats are right. We fight for the American dream, for the environment, for privacy rights, a woman's right to choose, a good public education system.

  Barbara Boxer

  Dream, Fighting, Thinking

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• I am very proud of the quality of public education in Nebraska, but I believe we have an obligation to continually assess whether our system is meeting 21st Century education needs.

  Dave Heineman

  Believe, Quality, Proud

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• Letting things slide is always the easiest thing to do, in parenting no less than in banking, public education, and environmental protection. A lack of discipline is apparent these days in just about every aspect of American society. Why? This should be is a much larger question, one to ponder as we take out the garbage and tie our kids' shoes.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Kids, Shoes, Ties

  "Spoiled Rotten". www.newyorker.com. July 2, 2012.

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• There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose, they represent an unusually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic institutions.

  Diane Ravitch

  Running, Powerful, Common Purpose

  Diane Ravitch (2016). “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education”, p.143, Hachette UK

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• We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.

  Melissa Harris-Perry

  Education, Children, Kids

  "'Collective' outrage over MSNBC promo". "The Five", www.foxnews.com. April 9, 2013.

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• Racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional.....All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle.

  Earl Warren

  Yield, Law, Principles

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• You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It's just grotesque.

  Gore Vidal

  Educational, Media, Average

  "Gore Vidal's America: Gore Vidal on liberty". The Real News Interview, therealnews.com. July 11, 2007.

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• [The] erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardised citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

  H. L. Mencken

  Knowledge, Independent, Science

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• American Education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will Stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so?

  Diane Ravitch

  Education, Business, School

  Diane Ravitch (2016). “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education”, p.236, Basic Books

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• I believe public education is the new civil rights battle and I support charter schools.

  Andrew Cuomo

  Believe, School, Rights

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• We have to grasp, as Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill, and lie to make money. They throw poor people out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars for profit, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women. They worship money and power.

  Chris Hedges

  Crush, Lying, War

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• What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Technology, Envy, Immigration

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• As a teacher of fourth-graders in a public school, where corporal punishement was not allowed, she had years of violence stored up and was, truth be told, sort of enjoying letting it out on Kona, who she felt could have been the poster child for the failure of public education.

  Christopher Moore

  Teacher, Children, School

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• The Republicans, with their crazed Reagan fixation, are a last-gasp party, living posthumously, fighting battles on sex, race, immigration and public education long ago won by the other side. They're trying to roll back the clock, but time is passing them by.

  Maureen Dowd

  Sex, Party, Fighting

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• While the romanticized ideal of universal public education resonates with the cognoscenti who oppose vouchers, poor urban families just want the best education for their children, who will certainly need it to function in our high-tech and advanced society.

  Clarence Thomas

  Children, Needs, Politics

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• Shoot, I must have lived such a doggoned sheltered life as a normal, independent American up there in the Last Frontier, schooled with only public education and a lowly state university degree, because obviously I haven't learned enough to dismiss common sense.

  Sarah Palin

  Independent, University Degrees, Common Sense

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• The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies - easily checkable, blatant lies - and I'm not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men - 15 of them are Saudis - and five minutes later the whole country thinks they're from Iraq - how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O.J. Simpson jurors.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Country, Lying, Ignorance

  "Ruminator" Magazine, August/September 2005.

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• Courts should always do the right thing. But if winning were as simple as making a good argument and filing a good brief, then we would have won the freedom to marry 40 years ago. We must put the legal work next to the public education work next to the legislative work next to the organizing work, and that's what's brought us so far.

  Evan Wolfson

  Winning, Simple, Years

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• Public education for some time has been heavily focused on what curricula we believe will be helpful to students. Life-Enriching Education is based on the premise that the relationship between teachers and students, the relationships of students with one another, and the relationships of students to what they are learning are equally important in preparing students for the future.

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Teacher, Believe, Communication

  Marshall B. Rosenberg (2003). “Life-enriching Education: Nonviolent Communication Helps Schools Improve Performance, Reduce Conflict, and Enhance Relationships”, p.15, PuddleDancer Press

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• Our public education system does a great job. I don't think it's broken. We aren't interested in doing reform for reform's sake. I believe in public education; it did a great job for me. It deserves our support and encouragement.

  Denise Juneau

  Encouragement, Jobs, Believe

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• The rascal multitude are the proper targets of the mass media and a public education system geared to obedience and training in needed skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely occasions.

  Noam Chomsky

  Patriotic, Media, Skills

  Noam Chomsky (2011). “Deterring Democracy”, p.363, Random House

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• Evolution is not controversial in the field of science. It's controversial in the public sphere because public education is highly politicized.

  Eugenie Scott

  Fields, Spheres, Evolution

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• We're first on executions. We're 49th in funding public education. We're in a race with Mississippi for the bottom, and we're winning.

  Kinky Friedman

  Winning, Race, Firsts

  "Kinky Friedman Talks with Bill O'Reilly About Why He Wants to be Governor of Texas". The O'Reilly Factor" with Bill O'Reilly, www.foxnews.com. March 14, 2005.

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