Quotes & Sayings About Public Education

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

The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expense of it," [John] Adams wrote. "There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves." Jefferson's fear was that without such a system of public education, the country would end up being ruled by a privileged elite that would recycle itself through a network of private institutions that entrenched their advantage. — Fareed Zakaria

Apparently almost anyone can do a better job of educating children than our so-called 'educators' in the public schools. Children who are home-schooled by their parents also score higher on tests than children educated in the public schools ... Successful education shows what is possible, whether in charter schools, private schools, military schools or home-schooling. The challenge is to provide more escape hatches from failing public schools, not only to help those students who escape, but also to force these institutions to get their act together before losing more students and jobs. — Thomas Sowell

I think there is widespread agreement that there is a crisis in public education. — Mitch Kapor

Sensible of the importance of Christian piety and virtue to the order and happiness of a state, I cannot but earnestly commend to you every measure for their support and encouragement ... Manners, by which not only the freedom, but the very existence of the republics, are greatly affected, depend much upon the public institutions of religion and the good education of youth; in both these instances our fathers laid wise foundations, for which their posterity have had reason to bless their memory. — John Hancock

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation, And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had everything been wrong, we should certainly have heard. — W. H. Auden

It's time to update traditional public schools, charter schools, home schools, online schools and parochial schools. Let the dollars follow the child instead of forcing the child to follow the dollars, so that every child has the opportunity to attain an education. — Bobby Jindal

The public is not cognizant of the real value of education, and does not realize that education as a social force is not receiving the kind of attention it has the right to expect in a democracy. — Edward L. Bernays

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad. — Friedrich Nietzsche

For what can give a finer example of that frankness and manly self- confidence which our great public schools, and none of them so much as Eton, are supposed to inspire, of that buoyant ease in holding up one's head, speaking out what is in one's mind, and flinging off all sheepishness and awkwardness, than to see an Eton assistant-master offering in fact himself as evidence that to combine boarding-house- keeping with teaching is a good thing, and his brother as evidence that to train and race little boys for competitive examinations is a good thing? — Matthew Arnold

We've got to move beyond the idea that the public and private sectors are at odds. Government has to lay the groundwork for private equity to productively invest in things like education. It's a partnership, not a battle. — Sebastian Pinera

The public library is a center of public happiness first, of public education next. — John Cotton Dana

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

For Jefferson, there was one step crucial to creating a genuine natural aristocracy. The poor and rich had to have equal access to a good education. That's why, despite being soemthing of a liberatarian, he repeatedly proposed that the state pay for universal primary education as well as fund education at later stages. He was met with opposition from many quarters, mostly those wary of big government or highter taxes. Yet interestingly, one of this most ardent supporters was an old friend and political opponent, the conservative John Adams. "The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it," Adams wrote. "There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people. — Fareed Zakaria

In 1933, the Nazis came to power and the more systematic persecution of the Jews followed quickly. Laws were enacted which excluded Jewish children from higher education in public schools. — Jack Steinberger

There's only one way America's neighborhoods will begin to integrate: people have to want it more than vested public and corporate interests are opposed to it. And more people should want it. Mixed-race, mixed-income housing is a product we need to market. It's the only real solution to segregated schools, for one. (140) — Tanner Colby

Restoring prayer ... will scarcely at this date solve the grievous public school problem. Public schools are expensive and massive centers for cultural and ideological brainwashing, at which they are unfortunately far more effective than in teaching the 3 R's or in keeping simple order within the schools. Any plan to begin dismantling the public school monstrosity is met with effective opposition by the teachers' and educators' unions. Truly radical change is needed to shift education from public to unregulated private schooling, religious and secular, as well as home schooling by parents. — Murray Rothbard

I'm very, very concerned ultimately, as Medicaid costs increase in my state and most states, it's going to reduce funding for state aid to our public schools, to our higher education institution or higher taxes on the middle class that President Obama said he didn't want to do. And that's exactly where he's headed. — Dave Heineman

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art. — Barry Commoner

In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith. — John Taylor Gatto

If you're going to have a public subsidy to education, vouchers are clearly a better way of delivering it. They should result in some loosening up and privatization of the government school system. — Peter Brimelow

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

It constantly amazes me that defenders of the free market are expected to offer certainty and perfection while government has only to make promises and express good intentions. Many times, for instance, I've heard people say, "A free market in education is a bad idea because some child somewhere might fall through the cracks," even though in today's government school, millions of children are falling through the cracks every day. — Lawrence W. Reed

It's hard to improve public education - that's clear. — Bill Gates

Recent decades clearly demonstrate that the more secular our Public Schools become the less successful they become academically. — David Barton

In the United States the legacy of settler colonialism can be seen in the endless wars of aggression and occupations; the trillions spent on war machinery, military bases, and personnel instead of social services and quality public education; the gross profits of corporations, each of which has greater resources and funds than more than half the countries in the world yet pay minimal taxes and provide few jobs for US citizens; the repression of generation after generation of activists who seek to change the system; the incarceration of the poor, particularly descendants of enslaved Africans; the individualism, carefully inculcated, that on the one hand produces self-blame for personal failure and on the other exalts ruthless dog-eat-dog competition for possible success, even though it rarely results; and high rates of suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual violence against women and children, homelessness, dropping out of school, and gun violence. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

You can't just provide power, you also need public education. — Zephyr Teachout

As for the problem of overproduction, which has been latent in our society since the development of the machine technique, it is solved by the device of continuous warfare, which is also useful in keying up public morale to the necessary pitch.
...
The problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously molding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way. — George Orwell

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

If shackling former prisoners with a lifetime of debt and authorizing discrimination against them in employment, housing, education, and public benefits is not enough to send the message that they are not wanted and not even considered full citizens, then stripping voting rights from those labeled criminals surely gets the point across. — Michelle Alexander

The biggest problem in AFRICA, is the government/public service leaders ensure that the education system teaches them WHAT to think and NOT HOW TO THINK. IT embeds a Fixed Mindest of Learned Helplessness. We can ReThink Resilience and psycap to transform the people, but the leaders won't be too happy when the voters can think beyond learned helplessness and a go beyond a liming culture 2000 years out of date.
We need to Rethink Education and culture in the digital age. — Tony Dovale

Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance. — Jonathan Kozol

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

Since the 1970s, we have witnessed the forces of market fundamentalism strip education of its public values, critical content, and civic responsibilities as part of its broader goal of creating new subjects wedded to consumerism, risk-free relationships, and the destruction of the social state. — Henry Giroux

The dilemma I was faced with was one every parent faces sooner or later: you want to defend your child, of course; you stand up for your child, but you mustn't do it all too vehemently, and above all not too eloquently - you mustn't drive anyone into a corner. The educators, the teachers, will let you have your say, but afterwards they'll take revenge on your child. You may come up with better arguments - it's not too hard to come up with better arguments than the educators, the teachers - but in the end, your child to going to pay for it. Their frustration at being shown up is something they'll take out on the student. — Herman Koch

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) — J. Gresham Machen

I have written 240 books on a wide variety of topics ... Some of it I based on education I received in my school, but most of it was backed by other ways of learning - chiefly in the books I obtained in the public library. — Isaac Asimov

In the ethical sense, propaganda bears the same relation to education as to business or politics. It may be abused. It may be used to over-advertise an institution and to create in the public mind artificial values. There can be no absolute guarantee against its misuse. — Edward Bernays

That is why conservatives are attacking the infrastructure of public education in the country. They have no choice. They are up against an infrastructure full of nurturers, and they don't like it one bit - and they shouldn't like it one bit. — George Lakoff

That education is the most important of all professions is a message the public should hear and understand. And, as importantly, a message that our educators need to hear as well. — Lowell Milken

If you want to know how to solve society's problems, you start out with better public education. — Michael Bloomberg

We have lots of evidence that putting investments in early childhood education, even evidence from very hard-nosed economists, is one of the very best investments that the society can possibly make. And yet we still don't have public support for things like preschools. — Alison Gopnik

Just in higher education alone, more people go to college now, by enormous amounts, than went to college in the '50's and '60's. So that represents a whole new literate public that's a consumer of literature, of news, of print, of, you know, opinion. And that's a bigger audience and much more diverse audience than it used to be. — Louis Menand

Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.
We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.
So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people. — John Green

Growing up, I was encouraged to get a good education, get a real job doing something I enjoyed, and, should the opportunity present itself, consider public service as just that: a chance to serve, not an end in itself. — John Sununu

The education, the cultural awareness, is different in Europe, especially in France, from that in the United States. So I think the public will be much more appreciative of many images. — Herb Ritts

Health education emphasizing risks is a form of pedagogy, which, like other forms, serves to legitimize ideologies and social practices. Risk discourse in the public health sphere allows the state, as the owner of knowledge, to exert power of the bodies of its citizens. Risk discourse, therefore, especially when it emphasizes lifestyle risks, serves as an effective Foucauldian agent of surveillance and control that is difficult to challenge because of its manifest benevolent goal of maintaining standards of health. In doing so, it draws attention away from the structural causes of ill-health. — Deborah Lupton

[The public school system is] usually a twelve year sentence of mind control.
Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism and
compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it
instead into meek subservience to authority. — Walter Karp

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

Learning is not filling up a box but seeing and imagining what we can create with it. — Jill Telford

Mexico is a pretty poor country, but they are maintaining a free, high quality public education system, not for everyone of course but pretty substantial. — Noam Chomsky

I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

We need science education to produce scientists, but we need it equally to create literacy in the public. Man has a fundamental urge to comprehend the world about him, and science gives today the only world picture which we can consider as valid. It gives an understanding of the inside of the atom and of the whole universe, or the peculiar properties of the chemical substances and of the manner in which genes duplicate in biology. An educated layman can, of course, not contribute to science, but can enjoy and participate in many scientific discoveries which as constantly made. Such participation was quite common in the 19th century, but has unhappily declined. Literacy in science will enrich a person's life. — Hans Bethe

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

My Alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. — David Mamet

We who preach the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of sports or modern education. We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum. God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death. — A.W. Tozer

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

I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If two countries fight that do not supply the Americans with some precious commodity, then the education of the public does not take place. But when the dictator falls, when the oil is threatened, then you turn on the television and they tell you where the country is, what the language is, how to pronounce the names of the leaders, what the religion is all about, and maybe you can cut out recipes in the newspaper of Persian dishes. — Don DeLillo

At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash daily and hourly by chalky pedagogues, I was at large in a wicked seaport of half a million people, with a front seat at every public show, as free of the night as of day, and getting earfuls of instruction in a hundred giddy arcana, none of them taught in schools ... [But] if I neglected the humanities, I was meanwhile laying in all the worldly wisdom of a police lieutenant, a bartender, a shyster lawyer, or a midwife. — H.L. Mencken

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

Close examination of the evidence shows that the poor were being included in private education, and only those who did not want to go to school were missing out. There was no need for public school except as a tool to undermine the church's influence in education. — Gregg Harris

Listening to the debates about public schools on the Christian Right, one hears plenty of opposing opinions and a great deal of confusion. Some want to change the schools, others want to leave them. But the smart money seems to know what it is doing. It provides support for programs like the Good News Club, which slowly erode the support for public education in the country at large and in their own constituency in particular. And then it lays the groundwork for dismantling public education in favor of a private system of religious education funded by the state. — Katherine Stewart

The public is the tribunal before which all art is judged - not the critics or the academies. The public is the artist's only patron, and has certain fundamental rights. It will submit to education, and will respond to suggestion, but it will not be bullied. — Walter J. Phillips

To put it simply, school readiness means creating in this country a public love of children. — Ernest L. Boyer

Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development. From these it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual. — Cyril Connolly

Because as Europe and the United States become more diverse, it creates an anxiety, a racial anxiety, that is reflected in declining support for public space, public institutions, public infrastructure, and public education. — John A. Powell

One of the very few valid criticisms of Queen Victoria is that she was not sufficiently concerned with improvement of the conditions in which a great mass of her subjects passed their lives. She lived through an age of profound social change, but neither public health, nor housing, nor the education of her people, nor their representation, engaged much of her time. — Cecil Woodham-Smith

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

For Americans the contradiction between national ideal and social fact required explanation and correction. Ultimately this contradiction did not lead to the abandonment of the ideal of equal opportunity but rather to its postponement: to the notion of achieving for the next generation what could not be achieved for the current one. And the chief means to this end was a brilliant American invention: universal, free, compulsory public education. This "solution" was especially important for children and families because it gave children a central role in achieving the national ideal. — Kenneth Keniston

We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge. — Matt Blunt

The Figurehead of American Public Education Who Prefers Private Religious Education (!)All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community, where a child is taught to have a strong faith. — Rod Paige

We have taken God out of our education system. We have taken Him out of government. You have lawyers that sue you every time you mention the name of Jesus Christ in any public forum. — Franklin Graham

With demands for special education or standardized test prep being shouted in their ears, public schools can't always hear a parent when he says: 'I want my child to be able to write contracts in Spanish,' or, 'I want my child to shake hands firmly,' or, 'I want my child to study statistics and accounting, not calculus.' — Amity Shlaes

Close Dept. of Education, but don't dismantle public schools. — Ron Paul

The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education. — John Dewey

A tiny portion of the population controls the lions share of the wealth and most of the command positions of state, manufacturing, banking, investment, publishing, higher education, philanthropy, and media ... these individuals exercise a preponderant influence over what is passed off as public information and democratic discourse. — Michael Parenti

As a senator from the only true swing district in the Texas Senate, I've been targeted by the GOP for my outspoken criticism of their extremist attacks on public education and voting rights, to name just two examples. — Wendy Davis

You can put a public school and university in the middle of every block of every city in America - but you will never keep America from rotting morally by mere intellectual education. — Billy Graham

The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation. — Thomas A. Edison

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

For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education. — Adam Smith

I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and public, of peace and war. — John Milton

An education, then, is a constellation of practices, rituals, and routines that inculcates a particular vision of the good life by inscribing or infusing that vision into the heart (the gut) by means of material, embodied practices. And this will be true even of the most instrumentalist, pragmatic programs of education (such as those that now tend to dominate public schools and universities bent on churning out "skilled workers") that see their task primarily as providing information, because behind this is a vision of the good life that understands human flourishing primarily in terms of production and consumption. Behind the veneer of a "value-free" education concerned with providing skills, knowledge, and information is an educational vision that remains formative. — James K.A. Smith

A zoo is a cultural institution. Like a public library, like a museum, it is at the service of popular education and science. And by that token, not much of a money-making venture for the Greater Good and the Greater Profit are not compatible aims. — Yann Martel

Today government touches everything in America and harms almost everything it touches. Federal, state, and local governments together spend 42 out of every 100 dollars we earn. Those who do the taxing and spending have long since ceased to work for the people as a whole. Rather, they work for themselves and for their clients-the education industry, the welfare culture, public-employee unions, etc.. — Malcolm Wallop

My early education was in the public school system of Omaha, where, retrospectively, I realize that my high school training served me in good stead for the basic subjects of mathematics, English, foreign languages and history. — Lawrence R. Klein

Mr Abrahams was a preparatory schoolmaster of the old-fashioned sort. He cared neither for work nor games, but fed his boys well and saw that they did not misbehave. The rest he left to the parents, and did not speculate how much the parents were leaving to him. Amid mutual compliments the boys passed out into a public school, healthy but backward, to receive upon undefended flesh the first blows of the world. — E. M. Forster

I think that anybody that stays in school, gets good grades, pays the price, I think we are wealthy enough in the public and the private sector in America to make sure that every child in America that wants to continue their education, they should be able to do that. — J. C. Watts

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

Direct popular government of a state larger than a city state had already failed therefore in Italy, because as yet there was no public education, no press, and no representative system; it had failed though these mere mechanical difficulties, before the first Punic War. — H.G.Wells

In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education. — Camille Paglia

Women, who enjoyed a high social status and levels of education under Saddam, saw terrible setbacks as Iraq fell into civil war. As a result of the sectarian violence from 2005-2007, women retreated to their homes and fell from public view. — Richard Engel

The whole realm of thought and opinion is utterly unsuited to public control; it ought to be as free, and as spontaneous as is possible. The state is justified in insisting that children shall be educated, but it is not justified in forcing their education to proceed on a uniform plan and to be directed to the production of a dead level of glib uniformity. — Bertrand Russell

A reason for using public transport that I've never heard mentioned before is the added time for thinking.
By driving, you, and everyone else who is driving, are wasting valuable time that could have been used for thinking.
For a single person that might not be much or significant, but across the population it could mean the difference between tens or even hundreds of years of advancement difference by just taking the bus rather than driving. — Rosen Topuzov

As regards moral courage, then, it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as that they suppress it firmly. — G.K. Chesterton

From kindergarten to graduation, I went to public schools, and I know that they are a key to being sure that every child has a chance to succeed and to rise in the world. — Dick Cheney

I am opposed to the use of public funds for private education. — Jonathan Kozol

History will also afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion, from its usefulness to the public; the advantage of a religious character among private persons; the mischiefs of superstition, and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern. — Benjamin Franklin

Two years ago, George Bush felt prompted to address this issue. More spending on public education, said the president, isn't "the best answer." Mr. Bush went on to caution parents of poor children who see money "as a cure" for education problems. "A society that worships money ... ," said the president, "is a society in peril." The president himself attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts - a school that spends $11,000 yearly on each pupil, not including costs of room and board. If money is a wise investment for the education of a future president at Andover, it is no less so for the child of poor people in Detroit. But the climate of the times does not encourage this belief, and the president's words will surely reinforce that climate. — Jonathan Kozol

Privatization is a neoliberal and imperialist plan. Health can't be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity and other public services. They can't be surrendered to private capital that denies the people from their rights. — Hugo Chavez