American Education Quotes

In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American education is that students come away unable to distinguish between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for. ~ Paul Lutus

We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education. ~ Paul Erdos

MOMA's values were blown through the American education system, from high school upwards-and downwards, too, greatly raising the status of "creativity" and "self-expression" in kindergarten. By the 1970s, the historical study of modern art had expanded to the point where students were scratching for unexploited thesis subjects. By the mid-eighties, twenty-one-year-old art-history majors would be writing papers on the twenty-six-year-old graffitists. ~ Robert Hughes

The multitudinous substitutes for indigenous culture cannot grow. Having no roots, they can only age and decay. Studious, sincere youth retires, defeated. American youth, capable of becoming serious competent artists, under such pressure as this on every side, confused, try not to give up
or "fall in line." This is the nature of about all that can be called American education in the arts and architecture at this time. As for religion true to the teaching of the great redeemer who said "The Kingdom of God is within you"
that religion is yet to come: the concept true not only for the new reality of building but for the faith we call democracy. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

That year, and every year, it seemed, we began by studying the Revolutionary War. We were taken in school buses on field trips to visit Plymouth Rock, and to walk the Freedom Trail, and to climb to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument. We made dioramas out of colored construction paper depicting George Washington crossing the choppy waters of the Delaware River, and we made puppets of King George wearing white tights and a black bow in his hair. During tests we were given blank maps of the thirteen colonies, and asked to fill in names, dates, capitals. I could do it with my eyes closed. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

American education has been littered with failed fads and foolish ideas for the past century. ~ Diane Ravitch

If you detect something mindless about American education, it's because the mind has been taken out of it. Only visible behavior counts. ~ Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Above them, one of the blackened television screens brightens, and there's an announcement about the in-flight movie. It's an animated film about a family of ducks, one that Hadley's actually see, and when Oliver groans, shes about to deny the whole thing. But then she twists around in her seat and eyes him critically.
"There's nothing wrong with ducks," she tells him, and he rolls his eyes.
"Talking ducks?"
Hadley grins. "They sing, too."
"Don't tell me," he says. "You've already seen it."
She holds up two fingers. "Twice."
"You do know it's meant for five-year-olds, right?"
"Five- to eight-year-olds, thank you very much."
"And how old are you again?"
"Old enough to appreciate our web-footed friends."
"You," he says, laughing in spite of himself, "are a mad as a hatter."
"Wait a second," Hadley says in mock horror. "Is that a reference to a...cartoon?"
No, genius. It's a reference to a famous work of literature by Lewis Carroll. But once again, I can see how well that American education is working for you. ~ Jennifer E. Smith

Immigrants have always come into the country with low levels of education. Whether it's the Irish or Italian or Polish, here is the land of opportunity. It's where people come in at the bottom and build themselves up. To try to bring in people who have already made it is un-American. ~ Lionel Sosa

It's fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training. ~ Raymond Chandler

People will urge you to go to school. They'll tell you an American education is useful. That is not true. That is 80's. You are here to hustle. ~ E. C. Osondu

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

In keeping Americans ill-educated, ill-informed and constitutionally ignorant, the education establishment has been the politician's major and most faithful partner. It is in this sense that American education can be deemed a success. ~ Walter E. Williams

Like television, motion pictures, and computers, [Stephen] King has replaced reading ... the triumph of the genial King is a large emblem of the failures of American education. ~ Harold Bloom

Perhaps the deterioration of American education is illustrated by the high correlation between the number of years a person has attended school and his inability to understand the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It is more likely, though, that those who interpret the Second Amendment to preclude an individual right to own guns are driven by their political agenda. Whichever the case, they do themselves no credit when they tell us that a simple, elegant sentence means the opposite of what it clearly says. ~ Sheldon Richman

One of the great failings of the American education system (in our view) is that young people can graduate from university without any understanding of poverty at home or abroad. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

We have a lot of rhetoric today about "high rigor" and you often hear terms like that thrown about when discussing the Common Core. But the American education system historically has not embraced intellectual seriousness. ~ Dana Goldstein

We don't reinvest in the American people. We don't put enough money into American education. ~ Jedediah Bila

The achievement of high universal literacy is the key to all other fundamental improvements in American education. ~ E.D. Hirsch Jr.

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

The story of declining school quality across the twentieth century is, for the most part, a fable, says social scientist Richard Rothstein, whose book The Way We Were? cites a series of similar attacks on American education, moving backward one decade at a time.3 Each generation invokes the good old days, during which, we discover, people had been doing exactly the same thing. ~ Alfie Kohn

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

Manuel was sent to Harvard, where he developed a profound contempt for American culture. 'The Americans,' he would say, 'brush their teeth before kissing and remember a page to answer a question. ~ Warren Eyster

First, this law - the National Defense Education Act - ended years and years of debate about one controversial question: 'Shall the Federal Government, with all its massive resources, get directly involved in aiding American education?' The answer this law gave was a loud 'Yes!' - and thus we paved the way for a new era of support for education in America. This law, in fact, helped make possible more than 50 new education laws passed in my administration. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

And everybody was happy that uncle lee was able to get that scholarship even though you wondered when you could do quadratic equations in your head why you had a basketball scholarship but you always knew that you had to take what they were giving since that was all you were going to get but you never fooled yourself about either the taking or the giving or the needing or the having you just sort of said to yourself I'll have to see what is being offered ~ Nikki Giovanni

Now the line is: Forget the classics, concentrate on an education for the 21st century! Which apparently means knowing how to operate electronic devices and figure out a spreadsheet. That's not education, it's vocational training. What once were means seem to have become ends in education. And our more with-it "educators" shift with every passing wind, clutching at the latest gimmick the way drowning men do at straws. ~ Paul Greenberg

The American education system couldn't be more badly directed or poorly funded if the Secretary of Education were Ed Wood. ~ Dennis Miller

With respect to the creation of the program, I introduced the bill in September 1945, immediately after the end of the war with Japan, in August of that year. A number of considerations, of course, entered into my decision to introduce the bill, growing from my own experience as a Rhodes scholar and the experiences our government had had with the first Word War debts, [Herbert] Hoover's efforts in establishing the Belgian-American Education Foundation after World War I, [and] the Boxer Rebellion indemnity. ~ J. William Fulbright

You may no longer be in school, but you must never stop learning. We need to be as smart as the white ghosts. ~ Stacey Lee

I was ovulated, fertilized, and born in the 20th century. I can't wipe out my whole personal background, or the fact that almost everyone I talk to today is brain-damaged by our education. I think American education makes us hopeless symbol addicts. It's designed to produce docile automatons. But it's going to take years before you can urge young people to drop out of school without appearing to be an eccentric or a mad-man. ~ Timothy Leary

American education is still the wonder of the world, and we must open the schoolhouse doors, not close them. ~ Lincoln Chafee

I've said no to 'Celebrity Big Brother,' 'Strictly,' and the American one, 'Dancing With The Stars.' I don't feel it's right for me. I've been asked to do reality TV a zillion times. No way. No way. Nobody's going to get into my living room and see me there. ~ Joan Collins

To some he was its champion and to others its demise, which would make no sense at all had the game not become an arena for the vitriolic national discourse over race, feminism, gender, central versus local power, and personal liberty. Every single divisive issue electrifying the American body politic has a twin in the game. It just carries a mace and a couple of fireball spells. ~ Anonymous

My advice to American filmmakers is to marry a European. I'm not kidding. Otherwise they don't qualify for international co-production treaties. ~ Jeremy Thomas

A friend is like a flower of life, it continue to make your life beautiful and happy even if you don't want it to. ~ Debasish Mridha

The problem with our education system is not that parents do not have a choice. The problem is that inequities continue to exist. ~ Patsy Mink

By degrees they spoke of education , and the book-learning that forms one part of it; and the result was that Ruth determined to get up early all throughout the bright summer mornings, to acquire the knowledge hereafter to be give to her child. Her mind was uncultivated, her reading scant; beyond the mere mechanical arts of education she knew nothing; but she had a refined taste, and excellent sense and judgment to separate the true from the false. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

The habits we form from childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference. ~ Aristotle.

Education is the key to the door of opportunity. ~ Debasish Mridha

The progress of the world depends almost entirely upon education. ~ George Eastman

I'm not sure, with a grandmother like mine, if you can ever become a true American in the sense of believing that life is about the pursuit of happiness. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

The American police are involved in psychological warfare against those Americans who don't frighten them with imposing papers and threats. It's a Victorian police force; it peers out of musty windows and wants to inquire about everything, and can make crimes if the crimes don't exist to its satisfaction. ~ Jack Kerouac

One thing we know for sure is that the Web is a collaborative medium unlike any we've ever had before. We see people working together, playing together, interacting in social settings using these media. We hope that will emerge as the new tool for education. ~ Vint Cerf

Everybody agrees that whatever the solutions are to the big problems, they ... can never be without some element of education. ~ Nicholas Negroponte

The traditional difficulty of balancing the mechanical with the imaginative schools of photography still operates. In schools of photography meaningful art education is often lacking and on the strength of their technical ability alone students, deprived of a richer artistic training, are sent forth inculcated with the belief that they are creative photographers and artists. It is yet a fact that today, as in the past, the most inspiring and provocative works in photography come as much (and probably more) from those who are in the first place artists. ~ Aaron Scharf

[An educated person:] One who voluntarily does more thinking than is necessary for his own survival. ~ Mildred H. McAfee

What happens once you get a felony conviction? Now you are entering this American caste system where you can't get a job, you can't get a loan, you can't get a Pell grant, you can't get public housing. ~ Cory Booker

The hot hall full of painted girls and American soldiers is a saloon in some Western film. This noise drenches us, wakens us to do something else. It shows us a lost path. ~ Jean Cocteau

The biggest risk in life is to fear and not to take any. ~ Debasish Mridha

All art is based on nonconformity ... Without nonconformity we would have had no Bill of Rights or Magna Carta, no public education system, no nation upon this continent, no continent, no science at all, no philosophy, and considerably fewer religions. ~ Ben Shahn

A sharp difference should exist between general education and specialized knowledge. As particularly today the latter threatens more and more to sink into the service of pure Mammon, general education, at least in its more ideal attitude, must be retained as a counterweight. ~ Adolf Hitler

Nations are beginning to look to some vague organization, some nebulous course of humanity, to pay their bills and tell them what to do. This is not local self-government. It is not American. It is not the method which has made this country what it is. We can not maintain the western standard of civilization on that theory. If it is supported at all, it will have to be supported on the principle of individual responsibility. ~ Calvin Coolidge

I don't care if you're Republican or a Democrat or a Liberal, getting crucified for the way you think or believe, obviously if it's not hurting anyone, it's just Un-American. ~ Angie Harmon

The fear that you come to a show called 'American Horror Story' with is yours. That being said, I'm glad people are afraid, and I hope that I'm contributing to their fear. I'm really not afraid of my own darkness anymore. I'm not afraid of what I'm capable of. ~ John Carroll Lynch

You're in a situation where you have limited education opportunities, you don't have any money, you can't get a job; what are you going to do? You're going to go back to this criminal network that you actually made while you were in prison. ~ Hill Harper

They now endure incessant cultural appropriation by a majority society in the United States that celebrates an idealized American Indian but ignores reservation life - the economic blight and marginalization of what are, in effect, national internment zones, exacerbated by federal inattention and mismanagement. In Indian country there are also thriving cultural traditions and creative genius, but these often receive little more recognition than the problems. - ~ T. J. Stiles

Tis useful nonetheless, now and then, to regard Politics here, as the greater American Question in Miniature, - in the way that Chess represents war, - with Governor Penn a game-piece in the form of the King. ~ Thomas Pynchon

To have a great life, live for others. ~ Debasish Mridha

Our head is designed to develop our intelligence, to devote ourselves to self- education, self -improvement and to broaden our perspective regarding the world around us ~ Sunday Adelaja

Many years ago, a large American shoe company sent two sales reps to different parts of the Australian outback. A while later, the company received a telegram from each. The first said, 'No business here - the natives don't wear shoes.' The second said, 'Great opportunity here - the natives don't wear shoes.' ~ John Capozzi

Peace, to have meaning for many who have only known suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health and education, as well as freedom and human dignity. ~ Ralph Bunche

The American Dream has been defined in dollar signs and square footage. ~ Joshua Becker

The appalling reality in American politics today is that, when ideology and money mix, truth is a mere inconvenience. ~ David Horsey

Man's most human characteristic is not his ability to learn, which he shares with many other species, but his ability to teach and store what others have developed and taught him. ~ Margaret Mead

Love as if it is eternal. Love when you are alive and when you are not alive. ~ Debasish Mridha

This old man had once told me that he left school when he was twelve, whereas I had spent most of the twenty-four years in my life in study. Yet when I looked back on the last hour or so I could come to only one conclusion. I'd had more of books, but he had more of learning. ~ James Herriot

The youth of the Church are hungry for things of the Spirit; they are eager to learn the gospel, and they want it straight, undiluted" (The Charted Course of the Church in Education, rev. ed. [1994], 3). ~ J. Reuben Clark

We all have scars. Just because mine are hidden doesn't make them any less painful. ~ Nicki Salcedo

Our life is sweet, short, and bright. We have enough moments to enjoy the delights of life. ~ Debasish Mridha

It seems incredible that the trustees of typically American fortune-created foundations should have permitted them to be used to finance ideas and practices incompatible with the fundamental concepts of our Constitution. Yet there seems evidence that this may have occurred. ~ Norman Dodd

If Henry James were still with us, he'd not only approve of Paris, He Said, he could have written it himself, though without his serpentine syntax. It's a delicious treat, studded with wise and beautifully observed detail, that places side by side those perpetually fascinating antagonists, the eager, casual American and the meticulous, pleasure-driven French. Christine Sneed knows everyone's intimate secrets and her book is lively, amusing, and, ultimately, kind to pretty much all of them. ~ Rosellen Brown

Learning turns the wheels of enlightenment. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it. ~ Flannery O'Connor