Quotes & Sayings About Education Reform

By educating the young, we are building a liberating potential force indirectly. — Auliq Ice

In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington. Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so. John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment. — Zell Miller

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

Ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse the British elementary schools, as they would abuse the British climate? How few have we met who realized that British education can be altered, but British weather cannot? ... For a thousand that regret compulsory education, where is the hundred, or the ten, or the one, who would repeal compulsory education? ... At the beginning of our epoch men talked with equal ease about Reform and Repeal. Now everybody talks about reform; nobody talks about repeal. — G.K. Chesterton

Times are tough but they are tough because the government is trying to do the right thing, whether on public service reform, education, health, anti-social behaviour and welfare, or in counter-terrorism — Tony Blair

childish. Thereupon Filomena excused herself, that she might put a clean shirt on Jacopone, and Odo was left to his melancholy musings. His mind had of late run much on economic abuses; but what was any philandering with reform to this close contact with misery? It was as though white hungry faces had suddenly stared in at the windows of his brightly-lit life. What did these people care for education, enlightenment, the religion of humanity? What they wanted was fodder for their cattle, a bit of meat on Sundays and a faggot on the hearth. — Edith Wharton

Change flows organically from the students themselves. — David Edward Goldberg

Furthermore, we believe that health care reform, again I said at the beginning of my remarks, that we sent the three pillars that the President's economic stabilization and job creation initiatives were education and innovation - innovation begins in the classroom - clean energy and climate, addressing the climate issues in an innovative way to keep us number one and competitive in the world with the new technology, and the third, first among equals I may say, is health care, health insurance reform. — Nancy Pelosi

We need first of all the reform of our justice system. We need reform of the education system, because of quality of education because of innovation and technology. And we need administrative reform. Too much bureaucracy. — Iveta Radicova

The education that you give to the upper classes will not uproot idolatry and prejudice, for it is amongst the masses that the error and prejudice will always maintain their power, and while you do not uproot those prejudices from the hearts of the masses, a handful of educated Hindus will never be able successfully to reform the country. — Keshub Chandra Sen

It's time for the US to widen its circle of learning, not to circle its wagons against hostile ideas in education reform. — Andy Hargreaves

Those outside of autism need to understand this is an epidemic and we need more government funding, insurance coverage and education reform. — Jenny McCarthy

Dear teachers, please make reading and writing fun. Reading and writing shouldn't be a punishment while in school. I ask you to create and teach two electives: "Reading for Pleasure" and "Writing for Pleasure". — Gloria D. Gonsalves

Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossibe courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects. — Umberto Eco

When ministers in this government talk about investing in education and skills, about making the planning system work; about employment law reform and delivering transport and power generation and broadband communication infrastructure, we are talking about raising Britain's productivity. — Philip Hammond

It would be better to have no school at all than the schools we now have. Encouraged, instead of frightened, children could learn several languages before reaching age of four, at that age engaging in the invention of their own languages. Play'd be play instead of being, as now, release of repressed anger. — John Cage

I thought if anyone need a leg up, it was our foster children. So, I started getting involved in education reform, and that was back in 1998. And as a result of all the reform work that I had done, people urged me to run for the Minnesota state Senate. I did, I was there for six years. — Michele Bachmann

The chief reason [Bill] O'Reilly is a conservative is that like all conservatives he offers no solutions for the major issues confronting those he pretends to champion--such as better wages, workable health insurance, education for every deserving child, controls on the corporate thugs that are destroying our earth, an unfettered national voice for the ordinary citizen, reform of the election laws of this country that permitted corporations to own the country and enslave the people. — Gerry Spence

Today, a similar debate rages in black communities about the underlying causes of mass incarceration. While some argue that it is attributable primarily to racial bias and discrimination, others maintain that it is due to poor education, unraveling morals, and a lack of thrift and perseverance among the urban poor. Just as former slaves were viewed (even among some African Americans) as unworthy of full citizenship due to their lack of education and good morals, today similar arguments can be heard from black people across the political spectrum who believe that reform efforts should be focused on moral uplift and education for ghetto dwellers, rather than challenging the system of mass incarceration itself. — Michelle Alexander

There is a growing acceptance and interest in publicly funded school choice as a catalyst for education reform in general and a way to empower parents to be education reformers. — John T. Walton

I would like to be a terrorist for music education - to make a complete reform, all over the world. — Daniel Barenboim

The whole point of education is that it should give a man abstract and eternal standards, by which he can judge material and fugitive conditions. If the citizen is to be a reformer, he must start with some ideal which he does not obtain merely by gazing reverently at the unreformed institutions. And if any one asks, as so many are asking: 'What is the use of my son learning all about ancient Athens and remote China and medieval guilds and monasteries, and all sorts of dead or distant things, when he is going to be a superior scientific plumber in Pimlico?' the answer is obvious enough. 'The use of it is that he may have some power of comparison, which will not only prevent him from supposing that Pimlico covers the whole planet, but also enable him, while doing full credit to the beauties and virtues of Pimlico, to point out that, here and there, as revealed by alternative experiments, even Pimlico may conceal somewhere a defect. — G.K. Chesterton

That is in part because the very words "education reform" indicate that the question is "What's wrong with our schools?" when in reality, the question might be better phrased as "Why do American kids know less than kids from Estonia and Poland?" When you ask the question differently, you look for answers in different places. — Steven D. Levitt

The emotional transformation of engineering education isn't magical thinking. Nor is it a vague abstraction or a series of touchy-feely practices. It is based on a philosophy of education that is grounded in the real world and in the lives of the students we serve. It's available to everyone. It isn't expensive. It can't be accomplished in the old paradigm under the old assumptions about how education change happens, but in the right atmosphere, the change flows organically from the students themselves. That atmosphere requires systematic language change, culture change, and personal change by students, faculty, and all the stakeholders in education. — David Edward Goldberg

The promise of education reform can never be fulfilled without adequate funding, and by shortchanging our schools, President Bush is breaking his promise to our children. — Joe Lieberman

I'm excited about seeing a bipartisan plan to reform education in the United States. The only other option is to protect the status quo and I really don't think anybody wants to do that. — John Rowland

Every strategy for real social change - land reform, education, public health, the equitable distribution of natural resources ... - has been cleverly, cunningly, and consistently scuttled and rendered ineffectual by those castes and that class of people which has a stranglehold on the political process. — Arundhati Roy

Classical education was based on the seven liberal arts or sciences: grammar, the formal structures of language; rhetoric, composition and presentation of argument; dialectic, formal logic; arithmetic; geometry; music; astronomy.14 For centuries, the classics dominated the very idea of being educated and attempts at reform were resisted. — Ken Robinson

You cannot simply put more money into the same system and get better results, so we will need to reform and innovate in the delivery of education. — Rob McKenna

Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform. — Derrick A. Bell

In the long run, we need to build a leadership force of people. We have a whole strategy around not only providing folks with the foundational experience during their two years with us, but also then accelerating their leadership in ways that is strategic for the broader education reform movement. — Wendy Kopp

An educator ... a good one that is, inspires others to be even better than herself. — Jill Telford

Mao relied on propaganda and education - "Thought Reform," as he called it, which became known colloquially as xinao, or "mind-cleansing." (In 1950, a CIA officer who learned of it coined the term brainwashing.) — Evan Osnos

I've been very engaged in Illinois and Chicago civic activities for a long time; mostly around building businesses and helping entrepreneurs grow companies, but also around education and education reform. — Bruce Rauner

The worst feature of the Common Core is its anti-humanistic, utilitarian approach to education. It mistakes what a child is and what a human being is for. That is why it has no use for poetry, and why it boils the study of literature down to the scrambling up of some marketable "skill" [ ... ] you don't read good books to learn about what literary artists do ... you learn about literary art so that you can read more good books and learn more from them. It is as if Thomas Gradgrind had gotten hold of the humanities and turned them into factory robotics. — Anthony Esolen

I wonder in what way I would function as a person, in a society without ever attending school. I'd be myself. — J.R. Rim

Learning and education are a normal part of everyday life and do not need a vast expensive bureaucracy to force them to happen. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

Bail out the bankers and bankrupt the school teachers - we will still teachI will never follow the lead of those who exclude the kids who need education the most so that my precious scores will rise. I will never line up with those whose idea of reform is the subtle segregation of the poor and desperate. I want no part of the American caste system. — John Kuhn

Welcome to Hartford. The poorest city in the wealthiest state in the richest country on earth. — Susan Eaton

The idea of school choice is spreading like wildfire around the country, because it's the one education reform that puts real choices and real opportunities in the hands of families who desperately need them. — Clint Bolick

Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education. — Diane Ravitch

Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible. — Robert M. Hutchins

Democratic politicians want to solve the crisis of poor education by taking more of your money and using it to reduce classroom sizes in the government schools. Republican politicians want to solve the crisis by taking more of your money to provide vouchers to a handful of the poorest students in each area, paying for a part of the tuition expense at private schools. But before long this 'reform' would make those private schools indistinguishable from the government schools ... Vouchers are an excellent way for the government to increase control over private schools. — Harry Browne

The Indians , whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion. And if it be not so in this civiliz'd part of the world, we must impute it to a neglect in education, which has not yet reform'd this antient piece of barbarity amongst us. — John Locke

Higher education should be based on quality, not quantity; receive merit-based funding; and be free of unnecessary bureaucracy. Not the least of the benefits of educational reform is to foster the pride of achievement at national and international levels. — Ahmed Zewail

In the twenty-first century, we use a nineteenth-century school model with twentieth-century values. There's clearly something wrong with this picture. — Zander Sherman

Beware of critics of education who cloak their desire to protect privilege (and inequality) in the garb of educational reform. — Michael S. Roth

Whatever the reason, the fact is that there was no widespread catechetical teaching for Christian children. Things were going to change. The growing awareness of the need for Christian education was one of the chief forces behind the desire in the sixteenth century to reform the rite of baptism. — Hughes Oliphant Old

Take Hispanic voters. They favor Democrats because they like the party's programs, from health care reform to government spending on education. It's not because the Republicans don't have a big enough Office of Hispanic Outreach. — Gail Collins

At Newsweek, I get paid to meet amazing people and write about subjects that fascinate me: fusion energy, education reform, supercomputing, artificial intelligence, robotics, the rising competitiveness of China, the global threat of state-sponsored hacking. — Dan Lyons

Already we're seeing graduates of U.S. higher education going back to their home countries and contributing to societies there, where in the past they would have stayed in the U.S. and built new companies here. We have to have immigration reform that allows talented foreigners to become Americans. — David Malpass

Like taking a breath, learning was the simple and extraordinary result of being alive. — Zander Sherman

The purpose of school should not be to prepare students for more school. We should be seeking to have fully engaged students now. — Donalyn Miller

I'm not only a lawyer, I have a post doctorate degree in federal tax law from William and Mary. I work in serious scholarship and work in the United States federal tax court. My husband and I raised five kids. We've raised 23 foster children. We've applied ourselves to education reform. We started a charter school for at-risk kids. — Michele Bachmann

Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships - the one-day variety or longer - these are all powerful, cheap, and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force open the idea of "school" to include family as the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents - and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 - we're going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. — John Taylor Gatto

Let's put our money where our mouth is; let's invest in the future by investing in the education of our youth and the re-education of those who need it and aren't so young anymore. It's not charity; it's an investment in the mental, intellectual, and social infrastructure of our country and our planet. Charity is something you give to corporations when they commit crimes of fraud and plunge the world into economic turmoil. — Steve Bivans

When students cheat on exams it's because our school system values grades more than students value learning. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform. — Reed Hastings

Slowly but certainly the proletarian, by every political reform which secures his well-being under new rules of insurance, of State control in education, of State medicine and the rest, is developing into the slave, leaving the rich man apart and free. All industrial civilization is clearly moving towards the re-establishment of the Servile State. — Hilaire Belloc

Oh my eye Betty Martin! Aren't I glad it isn't me that's going to school! It looks just like a prison. — Henry Handel Richardson

Texas is a national leader in education reform and student achievement. Through our college- and career-ready standards and assessments, strong school accountability, and a focus on educator development, we have created an education system that prepares our students for success after graduation. — Rick Perry

Sir Ken Robinson's 2008 talk on educational reform - entitled "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" - has now been viewed more than 4 million times. In it Robinson cites the fact that children's scores on standard tests of creativity decline as they grow older and advance through the educational system. He concludes that children start out as curious, creative individuals but are made duller by factory-style schools that spend too much time teaching children academic facts and not enough helping them express themselves. Sir Ken clearly cares greatly about the well-being of children, and he is a superb storyteller, but his arguments about creativity, though beguilingly made, are almost entirely baseless. — Ian Leslie

education without inspiration is only a recipe for desperation — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I thought that conclusion that we leaped to right after the election, that has been disproven statistically so many times, I don't know why Republicans would advocate that advocating for comprehensive immigration reform is somehow a political solution for the Republicans losing a percentage of Hispanics. I probably have less appetite for this than either the Senate or colleagues in the House, certainly the Democrats and most likely members of the Republican Conference. They are still wrestling with trying to get their education up to a level where they can actually advocate for policy. — Steve King

Schools train you to be ignorant with style [ ... ] they prepare you to be a usable victim for a military industrial complex that needs manpower. As long as you're just smart enough to do a job and just dumb enough to swallow what they feed you, you're going to be alright [ ... ] So I believe that schools mechanically and very specifically try and breed out any hint of creative thought in the kids that are coming up. — Frank Zappa

We face a choice this election. President Obama is fighting for changes that grow the economy from the middle out and help all Americans succeed - jobs, education, health reform, the DREAM Act, equal pay for women. He is moving us forward with opportunity today for prosperity tomorrow. Mitt Romney wants to take us back to yesterday. — Eva Longoria

I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. — John Dewey

[The Truth Seeker is] Devoted to: science, morals, free thought, free discussions, liberalism, sexual equality, labor reform, progression, free education and whatever tends to elevate and emancipate the human race.
Opposed to: priestcraft, ecclesiasticism, dogmas, creeds, false theology, superstition, bigotry, ignorance, monopolies, aristocracies, privileged classes, tyranny, oppression, and everything that degrades or burdens mankind mentally or physically. — De Robigne Mortimer Bennett

At a time when we need an urgent national conversation about how schools and curriculum should address the environmental crisis, we're being told that the problems we need to focus on are teacher incompetence, government monopoly, and market competition. The reform agenda reflects the same private interests that are moving to shrink public space-interests that have no desire to raise questions that might encourage students to think critically about the roots of the environmental crisis, or to examine society's unsustainable distribution of wealth and power. — Bill Bigelow

Global poverty is a complex web of interlinked problems. There is no one 'silver bullet' that will solve global inequality. Multiple contributing factors must be tackled in parallel. Yes, education alone is unlikely to lead to employment without economic reform to address the demand side in much of the developing world. — Adam Braun

President Obama and Secretary Duncan have made stronger teacher evaluation a key part of their education reform efforts. Under their signature plan, called 'Race to the Top,' states can win federal support for schools by improving teacher evaluations. — Juan Williams

Indeed, while so much in education reform can divide activists into warring camps, expanding learning time unites reformers around a shared vision of bringing excellence and breadth to our nation's most impoverished and struggling schools. — Chris Gabrieli

The economy is the start and end of everything. You can't have successful education reform or any other reform if you don't have a strong economy. — David Cameron

It is a lesson of the sixties: liberals get in the biggest political trouble - whether instituting open housing, civilian compliant review boards, or sex education programs - when they presume that a reform is an inevitable comcomitant of progress. It is then they are most likely to establish their reforms by top-down bureaucratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues. — Rick Perlstein

Latinos care about education, yes, so we need reform, not just money. — Susana Martinez

Too many of our children cannot read. Reading is the building block, and it must be the foundation for education reform. — George W. Bush

I encourage everyone to pay attention to the issues that matter to you, from jobs and the economy, to education and our schools, to criminal justice reform. Whatever it is that you care about, make sure you use your voice. — Two Chainz

The process of reforming the mental health system never includes the complaints that families and caregivers have regarding a need for increased access to resources, treatment, education, and financial support. Reform has continued to ignore the basic needs of families and suffering individuals with severe mental illness and special needs. — Tamara Hill

Many times I am asked why the suffering of animals should call forth more sympathy from me than the suffering of human beings; why I work in this direction of charitable work more than toward any other. My answer is that because I believe that this work includes all the education and lines of reform which are needed to make a perfect circle of peace and goodwill about the Earth. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

One current reaction to change in families, for example, is the proposal for more "education for parenthood," on the theory that this training will not only teach specific skills such as how to change diapers or how to play responsively with toddlers, but will raise parents' self-confidence at the same time. The proposed cure, in short, is to reform and educate the people with the problem. — Kenneth Keniston

Education reform has as its main purpose to make sure that the education delivered is of quality. — Enrique Pena Nieto

Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves? — Diane Ravitch

You know, people like Hillary Clinton think you grow the economy by growing Washington. I think most of us in America understand that people, not the government creates jobs. And one of the best things we can do is get the government out of the way, put in reign in all the out of control regulations, put in place and all of the above energy policy, give people the education, the skills that the need to succeed, and lower the tax rate and reform the tax code. — Scott Walker

Those life experiences that helped shaped my political beliefs are with me in every position I take and every vote that I cast - whether it be in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, strengthening Social Security and Medicare, or improving our nation's education system. — Mark Takano

Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly "reforming" their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact they're always busy "reforming" is an implicit admission that they didn't get it right the first 50 times. — Lawrence W. Reed

I went to Washington several times at the request of different parties to talk about education reform. I used to always say I felt like I needed to take a shower after I left, because it was so partisan that I just really hated it. — Paul Sadler

[The] overuse and misuse of standardized tests is only the start of the problems with NCLB. NCLB uses these test scores to impose sanctions that have no record of success as school improvement strategies, and in fact are not really educational strategies at all. They're political strategies designed to promote privatization and market reform in public education. — Stan Karp

Though the two issues may seem utterly unrelated, they do have this in common - both health care and higher education are realms of American life in which government has undermined the operation of market forces and caused artificially high prices. These are two arenas in which the Democrats now propose to do exactly the wrong thing. Their reform reinforces old errors and will infinitely compound the problem of rising prices. — Mona Charen

My view of university training is to unsettle the minds of young men, to widen their horizons, to inflame their intellects. It is not a hardening, or settling process. Education is not to teach men facts, theories, or laws; it is not to reform them, or amuse them, or to make them expert technicians in any field; it is to teach them to think, to think straight if possible; but to think always for themselves. — Robert M

The American university has become the final stage of the most all encompassing initiation rite the world has ever known. No society in history has been able to survive without ritual or myth, but ours is the first which has needed such a dull, protracted, destructive, and expensive initiation into its myth. The contemporary world civilization is also the first one which has found it necessary to rationalize its fundamental initiation ritual in the name of education. We cannot begin a reform of education unless we first understand that neither individual learning nor social equality can be enhanced by the ritual of schooling. We cannot go beyond the consumer society unless we first understand that obligatory public schools inevitably reproduce such a society, no matter what is taught in them. — Ivan Illich

Paraphrasing Plato's Republic: Only people who have allowed themselves to be reformed by reality have it in themselves to reform their polis for the better. — Rebecca Goldstein

There is a great reform required in the education and habits of females. — Ezra Cornell

I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a college, can at all avail to reach these difficulties and perplexities, but they solve themselves when we leave institutions and address individuals. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Education reform doesn't come cheap. But the price of ignorance is far, far greater — Rania Al-Abdullah

America needs education reform on all levels to expand quality schools, build on past successes, and lower college debt. — Kevin McCarthy

The world needs the kind of education by means of which character is formed, strength of the mind is increased and the human intellect is expanded beyond its own limits. — Abhijit Naskar

Valda said that if you change your residence every six months you can legally free your children from compulsory education. — John Cage

The greatest obstacle to those who hope to reform American education is complacency. — Diane Ravitch

From 1801, Napoleon began an ambitious programme of civil reform to standardise law and justice, centralise education, introduce uniform weights and measures and a fully functioning internal market. That achievement alone makes him one of the giants of history. — Saul David

A substandard education will always result in a substandard nation. — Aubrey Priest