Kids Education Quotes & Sayings

In addition to labeling kids who learn differently as problematic, sometimes defective, most schools classify, track, and categorize students from very early ages. As an abundance of research studies confirm, these classifications tend to become self-perpetuating and self-confirming. My interviewees illuminate the ways in which grades, tests, and opportunities to learn are often arbitrary or related to class, race, and gender. In the supposed meritocracy of schooling, these markers and estimations have profound impact, not just structuring how we fit into the learning hierarchy of an individual classroom, but who we are who whom we believe we will become. — Kirsten Olson

There has never in the history of the civilized world been a cohort of kids that is so little affected by adult guidance and so attuned to a peer world. We have removed grown-up wisdom and allowed them to drift into a self-constructed, highly relativistic world of friendship and peers. — William Damon

The more we want our children to be (1) lifelong learners, genuinely excited about words and numbers and ideas, (2) avoid sticking with what's easy and safe, and (3) become sophisticated thinkers, the more we should do everything possible to help them forget about grades. — Alfie Kohn

Children usually have a natural curiosity about the world and everything in it until they get to school and somebody throws them against the locker because they get A's and act intelligent. After that, some kids try to dumb it down and adapt. — Joshua Neik

Sometimes you don't have enough money to hire a real science teacher. Sometimes you have an old real science teacher who retires or quits and leaves you without a replacement. And if you don't have a real science teacher, then you pick one of the other teachers and make him the science teacher.
And that's why small-town kids sometimes don't know the truth about petrified wood. — Sherman Alexie

One of the problems with sex education ... is that it also strips kids - especially girls - of their modesty to have every detail of anatomy, physiology and condom usage made explicit. — James Dobson

It isn't a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state's goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government's propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They'll fasten the chains to their own ankles. H.L. Mencken once said that the state doesn't just want to make you obey. It tries to make you want to obey. And that's one thing the government schools do very well. — Llewellyn Rockwell

I had been very focused on the issue of education disparities in our country, and literally, by the time kids are just nine years old, in low-income communities, they're already three or four grade levels behind nine-year-olds in high-income communities. — Wendy Kopp

The government is there day in and day out, if you want all kids to have education, if you want to run courts, if you want to have an army, if you want to have roads, you've got to have the taxation system that funds everything that you expect. — Bill Gates

I grew up in a very progressive family and with a great educational system, and I asked myself, 'Why doesn't everybody have these opportunities for a good education? So why not give back to these kids who didn't grow up with the same privileges I had?' — Erin Gruwell

Historically, education has been about batch processing: standardize everything against the average, rank kids, sort them to see who gets more and who really doesn't deserve to be there. The problem, even if you're just being selfish from an economic standpoint, is we're not producing the talent we need. — L. Todd Rose

The best way would be education and kids and all that stuff and then education and working education comes through. Then I started a music school and the music school now teaches kids to play the violin and the viola. — A.R. Rahman

We never had it as rough as the kids have it today. Look at the price of a gallon of gas or a piece of real estate or a college education. — Suze Orman

I often would think about how we have built our society, and when you describe it out loud, it sounds rather insane. The idea of being funnelled through a conventional life progression of education, work, career, marriage, kids, divorce, retirement and then death doesn't seem that inspiring to me.
Then we're told we have to struggle to make a living, sacrifice enjoyment to have a family, delay our happiness until we're retired, fight the next person for a job, climb the ladder of success to get an even more stressful job,
spend more money than we earn, go into debt, live in fear of being blown up by some terrorist and then have TV passed off as the only way to escape it all. And when all of this gets too much and you can't keep up, you get prescribed antidepressants and made to feel like you've failed. — Josh Langley

One thing was clear: To give our kids the kind of education they deserved, we had to first agree that rigor mattered most of all; that school existed to help kids learn to think, to work hard, and yes, to fail. That was the core consensus that made everything else possible. — Amanda Ripley

I'm not planning on giving my kids any of my wealth. They know when their education is over, I'm pushing them out of the nest. The bird you see dead under the nest is the one who didn't think about the future. — Kevin O'Leary

In a way, education by its nature favours the extrovert because you are taking kids and putting them into a big classroom, which is automatically going to be a high-stimulation environment. Probably the best way of teaching in general is one on one, but that's not something everyone can afford. — Susan Cain

When i think of how racist, how Eurocentric our so-called education in amerika is, it staggers my mind. And when i think back to some of those kids who were labeled "troublemakers" and "problem students," i realize that many of them were unsung heroes who fought to maintain some sense of dignity and self-worth. — Assata Shakur

I'd like to work with kids in special education - younger kids. — John Madden

In addition to an education, kids were supposed to graduate with some basic values, self-discipline, and life skills. A little common sense wouldn't hurt either. Our schools don't teach that anymore. instead we're more concerned about kids having self-esteem and feeling good about themselves than we are about preparing them for real life. The politically correct crowd has taken over our schools, and as a result we are failing our children. — Donald J. Trump

The teachers don't know anything. What are the kids going to learn with a horrible education system? — Bill Maher

Spatial intelligence is virtually left out of formal education. In kindergarten we give children blocks and sand with which to build. Then we take those things away for the next twelve years of their education and expect kids to be architects and engineers. — Ann Lewin-Benham

School feeding is a great tool to encourage education and provide food aid to children born into extremely impoverished situations. The kids in school being fed by WFP are empowered by their school meal to learn and better their lives! — Lauren Bush

Sparta has no philosophers. That's because the job of a philosopher is to understand things better, which is a form of change, so they don't want it. Another difference: they don't honour living poets, only dead ones. Why? Because dead poets don't write anything new, but live ones do. A third difference: their education system is insanely harsh; ours is famously lax. Why? Because they don't want their kids to dare to question anything, so that they won't ever think of changing anything. How — David Deutsch

A recent study of three thousand New England high-school kids shows that students with B averages or better enjoyed seventeen to thirty-three minutes more sleep and went to bed ten to fifty minutes earlier than students with C averages. — Roger Angell

The best sex education for kids is when Daddy pats Mommy on the fanny when he comes home from work. — William Masters

The question then was not what other countries were doing, but why. Why did these countries have this consensus around rigor? In the education superpowers, every child knew the importance of an education. These countries had experienced national failure in recent memory; they knew what an existential crisis felt like. In many U.S. schools, however, the priorities were muddled beyond recognition. Sports were central to American students' lives and school cultures in a way in which they were not in most education superpowers. Exchange students agreed almost universally on this point. Nine out of ten international students I surveyed said that U.S. kids placed a higher priority on sports, and six out of ten American exchange students agreed with them. Even in middle school, other researchers had found, American students spent double the amount of time playing sports as Koreans. — Amanda Ripley

I know kids are supposed to go through these awkward stages, but I just never even thought about that. I was too busy worrying about getting my education while I was working. — Kirsten Dunst

As a kid who failed out of high school as a freshman, I know firsthand and personally that sense of hopelessness and just being - drifting in the wrong direction, having really no hope. And being able to harness that frustration was incredibly valuable in my life. That's one of the reasons I focus so consistently on the foundation of education, because it helps to eviscerate those things that - unemployment, high jobless rates, poverty. — Tim Scott

So are all the kids on the East Coast repeating school next year? Get ready to see a lot of hairy eighth graders. Storm brain drain. — Olivia Wilde

Arbitrary benchmarks cheat kids out of a fulfilling education. — James Dyson

For many kids, a good teacher may be the most palpable form of honor they will ever experience. — David Denby

That's the beauty of education, kids taking lessons out of the classroom and back into their own world where they can positively affect their family, their friends, and their greater community. — Erin Gruwell

This is my worst fear. It's not keeping my students safe from terrorists, it's knowing what to do when the Chaplain comes to take Johnny out of class because not letting the terrorists win means sometimes the good guys are going to die. And those good guys have kids, and they're sitting in my classroom. — Tucker Elliot

The kids in our classroom are infinitely more significant than the subject matter we teach. — Meladee McCarty

The whole system was based upon getting kids to a certain standard and packing their minds with information so they could go on to a good university ... The great failure in education, much of the time, is a lack of excitement and stimulus. — Bill Bryson

I just wish all these young black kids would realize how significant it is to stop acting a fool out there, killing each other, not getting their education. You know, people have died to put us in a situation to be successful. — Charles Barkley

When parents have invested enormous amounts of money in their kids' education, to find their kids coming back to live with them - well, that was not what they bargained for. — Peter Thiel

Once I started the first school, I realized this is what my life is meant to be, is to promote education and help kids go to school, and that's very clear. — Greg Mortenson

I've been in elementary education for years and my belief is that Christmas pageants in schools are little more than conditioning kids for the Christian religion. — Jack Bowman

The chalkboards are no longer cutting it. We've got to adapt education at every level to this new paradigm to keep our kids competitive. Affordability of technology has to be at the forefront of everything we do. — Scott Howell

Most children, even very bright ones, need constant review and practice to truly own a concept in grammar, math or science. In schools today, on paper it may appear that kids are learning skills, but in reality they are only renting them, soon to forget what they've learned over the weekend or summer vacation. — Rafe Esquith

Met two young guys from the Oregon National Guard ... The lieutenant told me about their temporary barracks in an old neighborhood high school. He told me that he was disgusted that kids ever went to school there, and that in Oregon the place would have been bulldozed and rebuilt so that kids could have a proper place to learn. He seemed troubled that all of this was happening in America. He realized that many of the problems he was seeing in New Orleans existed before the storm, and he wanted to know why people had put up with it and why they hadn't voted out of office the people who had let this happen. I told him I didn't know, but maybe we could change things in New Orleans in the future. He seemed hopeful. I felt less certain. — Billy Sothern

Kids don't always stop to judge or analyze a new experience unless the adults around them react strongly. Otherwise, they just take in the experience and move on to the next one. — Martin Sheen

Ben Says: Kids, In the game of life ... will it be the Hall Of Fame or The Hall Of Very Good? The choice is up to you. Education & work ethics will make the difference!
Timothy Pina
Bullying Ben — Timothy Pina

For kids who are exposed to books at home, the loss of a library is sad. But for kids who come from environments where people don't read, the loss of a library is a tragedy hat might keep them from ever discovering the joys of reading-or from gathering the kind of information that will decide their lot in life. — Michael Moore

...that the decline in reading among children was largely the fault of their parents. Parents these days don't read books, themselves, but they feel they should make their children read. Since they aren't readers, however, they have no idea what to give their children. That's why they cling to the recommendations from the Ministry of Education. Those books are all insufferably boring and, as a result, the kids learn to hate books. It's a vicious cycle with no end in sight. — Keigo Higashino

Teaching isn't rocket science. It's about being engaged, listening, paying attention. Despite conventional wisdom, you don't need to talk a lot to teach well. You do need to care, though. Not so much about what people think of you or whether or not they like you, but about the kids and doing what's best for them. — Tucker Elliot

My concern for education in New Mexico has always been there. I'm one of those kids that struggled through school, and I feel like I fell through the cracks. — Steven Michael Quezada

Scholars, street knowledge, Carter kids stuck in the projects. — Big Pun

In Philadelphia, our public safety, poverty reduction, health and economic development all start with education. We can't grow the middle class if we don't give our kids the tools they need to innovate and invent. — Michael Nutter

Most departments of education are set up largely to regulate schools and hold them in compliance. They don't really help schools. When a school is struggling with certain kids, they can't go to the state and say, "Can you help us with resources and training?" That should be their role. — Pedro Noguera

The biggest obstacle facing girls is education, education, education. There are too many kids who think high school is a pit stop to fame and fortune. I want girls in this country to think education is the coolest, most important thing they could ever do in their lives. — Michelle Obama

Education is not Democrat versus Republican. It's about doing the right things for the right reason for our kids. — Scott Howell

Don't terrorize. Organize. Don't burn. Give kids a chance to learn ... The real answer to race problems in this country is education. Not burning and killing. Be ready. Be qualified. Own something. Be somebody. That's Black Power. — James Brown

On the TV and in the newspapers all we hear and read is 'live your life or the terrorists win' and it sounds great, I'm all for that, except my kids won't ask for a bathroom pass because the faculty facilities are on the first floor of the building and the MPs patrolling the second floor won't go downstairs on their shift - so I've got middle school kids afraid to take a piss because there might be a soldier in the stall next to them carrying a loaded M- 16 - but hell yes, I'm all for 'live your life' and screw the terrorists, and screw all the countries who harbor and support them. I'm on board with that, except I've got these kids who stay home now, because they're scared riding a bus with soldiers carrying guns, knowing that one soldier isn't enough, so there's a military truck full of soldiers with even bigger guns following the bus 'just in case. — Tucker Elliot

While NCLB drove important progress on transparency and data disaggregation, I think it's clear that the status quo in public education is not working for our kids or our country. — Michael Bennet

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

I look back and see the kids who made it through school - it made a huge difference in their lives, which made me believe in the power of public education and what it can do for individuals and communities and the state. — Denise Juneau

The function of this school is custodial. It's here to keep these kids off the streets until the girls are big enough to get pregnant and the boys are old enough to go out and hold up a gas station. — William Gaddis

If the athletic program is not helping the kids understand God, man, sin, and salvation, then the program is failing, regardless of the win/loss record. But the same thing is true of the classroom program. — Douglas Wilson

In former mayor Dinkins's view, education, along with helping immigrants, is perhaps the greatest challenge facing New York City today. As he put it, "We must see to it that all of our children are well-educated. I argue that we don't own this planet. We hold it in trust. I love kids. I'm a nut for kids. I say to my friends, 'As much as I like you, if you don't take care of the children I'll report you to the authorities.' And they laugh, but I'm crazy about kids. — William B. Helmreich

Child psychologists have demonstrated that our minds are actually constructed by these thousands of tiny interactions during the first few years of life. We aren't just what we're taught. It's what we experience during those early years - a smile here, a jarring sound there - that creates the pathways and connections of the brain. We put our kids to fifteen years of quick-cut advertising, passive television watching, and sadistic video games, and we expect to see emerge a new generation of calm, compassionate, and engaged human beings? — Sidney Poitier

I went to school for special education. I always assumed when I had the opportunity I would love to try and help kids with disabilities. — Clay Aiken

Look, I want what's good for everybody. I want to promote good state education for all. I want to raise standards for all kids, irrespective of race and class but why can't they all just do what I say when I know I'm right? — Arabella Weir

I think women should have choices and should be able to do what they like, and I think it's a great choice to stay at home and raise kids, just as it's a great choice to have a career. But I don't entirely approve of people who get advanced degrees and then decide to stay at home. I think if society gives you the gift of one of those educations and you take a spot in a very competitive institution, then you should do something with that education to help others ... But I also don't approve of working parents who look down on stay-at-home mothers and think they smother their children. Working parents are every bit as capable of spoiling children as ones who don't work - maybe even more so when they indulge their kids out of guilt. The best think anyone can teach their children is the obligation we all have toward each other - and no one has a monopoly on teaching that. — Will Schwalbe

The education system is where young skulls full of mush are programmed and propagandized into the system. They are highly valuable. That's why they're subsidized. You know, universities are approaching the same circumstance we have in health care. What it costs is not related at all to market forces. Meaning what it costs is not related to what people can afford. You get right down to it, how many Americans, how many families can afford 20,000, 30,000, $50,000 a year or semester to send their kids off to college? It has to be subsidized. — Rush Limbaugh

Real Texans want their kids to have the best education possible, not the one politicians looking to brag about budget cuts have left us with. — Wendy Davis

But I like going to church. If you've been brought up in the Church of England, it feels like visiting an elderly relative. And I think it's important that part of the kids' education is knowing about the Bible. — Jack Dee

Some kids want to know why the teachers get paid when it's the kids who have to do all the work. — Milton Berle

Moral values have been thrown out the window. Christianity is out the window. And that's wrong. Parents should be at home, teaching kids right from wrong, making sure they get a great education so they can be a success in life. — Albert Belle

Sending our kids in my family to private school was a big, big, big deal. And it was a giant family discussion. But it was a circular conversation, really, because ultimately we don't have a choice. I mean, I pay for a private education and I'm trying to get the one that most matches the public education that I had, but that kind of progressive education no longer exists in the public system. It's unfair. — Matt Damon

We've gotta guarantee all of our kids an education. — Geoffrey Canada

You know, sometimes kids get bad grades in school because the class moves too slow for them. Einstein got D's in school. Well guess what, I get F's!!! — Bill Watterson

We need the middle class to feel more confident about its prospects and about its future. We need to cut down on this anxiety that sees some people succeeding and the majority struggling - having to make choices between paying for their kids' education or saving for their own retirement. — Justin Trudeau

We think it's about little techniques and tricks, but techniques only take you so far. We need teachers who care about kids, who care about what they teach, and who can communicate with kids. — Parker J. Palmer

Statistically speaking, tracking tended to diminish learning and boost inequality wherever it was tried. In general, the younger tracking happened, the worse the entire country did on PISA. There seemed to be some kind of ghetto effect: once kids were labeled and segregated into the lower track, their learning slowed down. — Amanda Ripley

The thing that got me about the Orphan Trains was that the experiences were so varied. Some of the kids went from neglect and hunger in New York to loving farm families who couldn't wait to fatten them up, who gave them medical care, an education, affection. And some of the kids became the victims of terrible cruelty, and more hunger, and more neglect - it all depended on who adopted them off of the train. — Laura Moriarty

That's my suggestion for kids who want to act, by the way: Make sure it's really your choice, get out of it when it stops being fun, and get an education. — Mara Wilson

I had an amazing mother. She raised nine kids, practically as a single parent, which is the hardest thing in the world. Nine of us! Day in and day out. She had to make sure we all had an education and that we all felt loved. — Sufe Bradshaw

I am trying to encourage kids to do something that isn't yet on their mind because it is not in popular culture. Popular culture tells you 'music, music, sports, sports.' It neglects the importance of a STEM education. — Will.i.am

education and money. I go to church with the kids for the same reason Genie and I play our grandchildren classical music and litter the floors and chairs all over our home with open art books. Jack, age three, eats his lunch with a big Goya book propped in front of him asking for the — Frank Schaeffer

Before playing football, I didn't fit in anywhere. My parents didn't have a lot of money, which they spent on our education to send us to Catholic private school in Oakland, mostly black. The other kids had more money than I did. I started school early; I was young. So I'd come back to my hood and read. — Ryan Coogler

As adults we choose our own reading material. Depending on our moods and needs we might read the newspaper, a blockbuster novel, an academic article, a women's magazine, a comic, a children's book, or the latest book that just about everyone is reading. No one chastises us for our choice. No one says, 'That's too short for you to read.' No one says, 'That's too easy for you, put it back.' No one says 'You couldn't read that if you tried
it's much too difficult.'
Yet if we take a peek into classrooms, libraries, and bookshops we will notice that children's choices are often mocked, censured, and denied as valid by idiotic, interfering teachers, librarians, and parents. Choice is a personal matter that changes with experience, changes with mood, and changes with need. We should let it be. — Mem Fox

Hollywood is fickle; your career can end pretty fast. If the acting jobs dry up, you have to have something to fall back on. In fact, that would be my advice to kids interested in acting - make sure you get an education too. — Matthew Lawrence

A simple summary of my life is that my parents worked very hard so that I could have a great education, and I took that education and worked very hard to get where I am. I would like my kids' lives to be exactly the same. — Guy Kawasaki

Got it. You're fourteen. I'm proud you can count that high. It's a testament to the modern American education system. But I should probable point out that you're not the only one. I'm told you go to a school with a whole class of-get this-kids who are fourteen.- Ash — Sherrilyn Kenyon

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

He was the kind of kid you did not want to sit by. He kept his boogers in his desk, he wore a neck tie. — John Hiatt

Half of all kids in public education are below the poverty line. Two-thirds of the achievement gap comes from factors outside of school. Teachers influence about seven to ten percent of what happens in kids' lives. When you think about those statistics, you have to think about how to re-envision education so it's holistic and so we share responsibility. — Randi Weingarten

I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better. — Sarah Palin

Kids don't need to be taught the value of making; they are natural makers, at least until traditional education makes them afraid of making mistakes. The long-term value of making for kids is in learning to become an active participant in the world around them rather than a consumer of prepackaged products and solutions. — Mark Frauenfelder

Nobody wants to pay higher taxes. But do you want your kids to get a good education? You have to pay for that. Do you want Medicare for senior citizens? I do. We have to pay for it. — Shelley Berkley

People don't want children to know what they need to know. They want their kids to know what they ought to need to know. If you're a teacher you're in a constant battle with mildly deluded adults who think the world will get better if you imagine it is better. You want to teach about sex? Fine, but only when they're old enough to do it. You want to talk politics? Sure, but nothing modern. Religion? So long as you don't actually think about it. Otherwise some furious mob will come to your house and burn you for a witch. — Nick Harkaway

[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are. — Jim Henson

Wealth had made rigor optional in America. But everything had changed. In an automated, global economy, kids needed to be driven; then need to know how to adapt, since they would be doing it all their lives. They needed a culture of rigor. — Amanda Ripley

It was a tough school. The kids on the debating team took steroids! — Milton Berle

We look for people who demonstrate perseverance in the face of challenges, the ability to influence and motivate others - people who want to work relentlessly to ensure that kids who are facing the challenges of poverty have an excellent education. — Wendy Kopp

We can teach about hip-hop history, we can teach about legends, hip-hop theory. It's been around so long that text books can be written about it. This is a perfect time to capitalize on and get kids excited about [music] education. — Kanye West

I had a public school education - 3,000 kids when I was there. And there were a lot of teachers who would just sit there. You'd come in and sign your name and the teacher would just sit there at the head of the class and you would literally just have to stay in your seat for 40 minutes and that was the only thing you'd have to do in class. — Casey Affleck