School Reform Quotes

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

You can't lead your troops if your troops do not trust you. ~ Diane Ravitch

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

Marriage is not a reform school. ~ Ann Landers

Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

In my mind, there is no reason public school reform should be a partisan issue. ~ Michael Bennet

During the Government's recent overhaul of GCSEs, I was asked to join a consultative group advising on the English Literature syllabus. It quickly became clear that the minister wanted to prescribe two Shakespeare plays for every 16-year-old in the land. I argued, to the contrary, that there should be one Shakespeare play and one play by anybody except Shakespeare. It cannot be in Shakespeare's interest for teenagers to associate him with compulsion, for his plays and his alone to have the dreaded status of set books. ~ Jonathan Bate

Republicans get a lot of money from big business, but they are not tied to the union dollar. As a result they have been aggressive advocates of school reform, charter schools and vouchers for private schools. ~ Juan Williams

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

We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national educational systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make
and the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. ~ Ken Robinson

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

I think one of the problems [with raising intelligent children in modern society] is compulsory schooling...and that children are sitting there, and they are taught and told what to believe; they are passive from the very beginning – and one must be very, very aggressive intellectually to have a high IQ [...] the child is taught. Right from the beginning, it's a passive process. He or she sits there, and they simply try to believe everything they're told? ~ Marilyn Vos Savant

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

While I do commend the Administration on its commitment and focus on high school reform, I believe that we must focus on graduation as the key accountability measure. ~ Ruben Hinojosa

Over recent years, [there's been] a strong tendency to require assessment of children and teachers so that [teachers] have to teach to tests and the test determines what happens to the child, and what happens to the teacher...that's guaranteed to destroy any meaningful educational process: it means the teacher cannot be creative, imaginative, pay attention to individual students' needs, that a student can't pursue things [...] and the teacher's future depends on it as well as the students'...the people who are sitting in the offices, the bureaucrats designing this - they're not evil people, but they're working within a system of ideology and doctrines, which turns what they're doing into something extremely harmful [...] the assessment itself is completely artificial; it's not ranking teachers in accordance with their ability to help develop children who reach their potential, explore their creative interests and so on [...] you're getting some kind of a 'rank,' but it's a 'rank' that's mostly meaningless, and the very ranking itself is harmful. It's turning us into individuals who devote our lives to achieving a rank, not into doing things that are valuable and important.

It's highly destructive...in, say, elementary education, you're training kids this way [...] I can see it with my own children: when my own kids were in elementary school (at what's called a good school, a good-quality suburban school), by the time they were in third grade, they were dividing up ~ Noam Chomsky

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

She nodded, taking his pistol and showing him the button to release the empty clip.
"Where did you learn how to shoot?" he asked.
"I teach high school. ~ J.A. Konrath

You live because you have to learn, and learn because you have to live. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Twas the day before Thanksgiving
And all through the trees,
The fall leaves were spinning
Aloft in the breeze.

Eight children had boarded
Their school bus with grins
In hopes that a field trip
Soon would begin.

They sang as they rode
Through autumn terrains,
While visions of drumsticks
Danced in their brains. ~ Dav Pilkey

It happens, therefore, that readers of the book, or of any other book built about a central concept, fall into three mutually exclusive classes:

(I) The class of those who miss the central concept-(I have known a learned historian to miss it) -not through any fault of their own,-they are often indeed well meaning and amiable people,-but simply because they are not qualified for conceptual thinking save that of the commonest type.

(II) The class of those who seem to grasp the central concept and then straightway show by their manner of talk that they have not really grasped it but have at most got hold of some of its words. Intellectually such readers are like the familiar type of undergraduate who "flunks" his mathematical examinations but may possibly "pull through" in a second attempt and so is permitted, after further study, to try again.

(III) The class of those who firmly seize the central concept and who by meditating upon it see more and more clearly the tremendous reach of its implications. If it were not for this class, there would be no science in the world nor genuine philosophy. But the other two classes are not aware of the fact for they are merely "verbalists" In respect of such folk, the "Behaviorist" school of psychology is right for in the psychology of classes (I) and (II) there is no need for a chapter on "Thought Processes"- it is sufficient to have one on "The Language Habit. ~ Cassius Jackson Keyser

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer. ~ George Orwell

I believe that religious faith schools are highly dubious. ~ Bjorn Ulvaeus

By the time I reached the sixth form at my local grammar school, my father would glower at me every time I passed him with a stack of books under my arm, warning me there was no money to go to university. ~ Christopher Fowler

All children are required to attend School, which is like a party to which everyone forgot to bring punch, or hats, or fiddles, and none of the games have good prizes. ~ Catherynne M Valente

We are not post-racial. And in many ways we don't even know how to have a conversation about being post-racial. Until we get out of that old-school way of thinking about race and opportunity and the ability to transcend some of the past of this country, then we're going to be stuck in the 20th-century conversation about race. ~ Donna Brazile

You know what I used to dream about, in stir?" His voice was hoarse, the words low and fast and faintly guttural. "I used to dream about you. You were the only clean and good and decent thing left in my life, and I would dream about you. I used to dream about taking your clothes off piece by piece, and what you would look like naked, and how it would feel to fuck you really good. I used to dream about that in high school, too. In fact, I got off almost every night for the last fourteen years, dreaming about you." Rachel's lips parted with shock. Speechless, she stared at him wide-eyed for what seemed an eternity while her heart suddenly hammered and her throat went dry.
"I'm fucking tired of dreaming, ~ Karen Robards

My mother said she was the most popular girl in school, and I believed it. Jackie said she was the meanest, and I believed that, too. ~ Gillian Flynn

For some students, school is the only place where they get a hot meal and a warm hug. Teachers are sometimes the only ones who tell our children they can go from an Indian reservation to the Ivy League, from the home of a struggling single mom to the White House. ~ Denise Juneau

In short, then, state companies have most of the assets, fill oligopolistic and thus profitable economic positions, receive virtually all bank credit (and at preferential rates), represent most of the stock market capitalisation and generate most of the profit. Private enterprises constitute most of the companies, provide most of the jobs, dominate exports, represent over two-thirds of economic activity and drive the economy. When analysed, this presents a rather unusual picture and demonstrates why there is a strong lobby against further economic reform. ~ Timothy Beardson

I love using my imagination because I am in my own world. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

I wasn't a class clown, because my parents were very strict and because nuns in general have no sense of humor. I mean zero, zip, nada. I wasted some of my best stuff on those old hags! Look at these knuckles - those are ruler marks, and they're still visible all these years later. But I could usually get out of trouble at home if I could get my mom laughing. That's a huge ace up your sleeve as a kid. ~ Dan Alatorre

Had my own car at twelve years old. Left school in the tenth grade. Married when I was sixteen. Ain't hard to figure out; I was a man at a very young age. ~ Joe Frazier

I felt like I was in the best photography school in the world - I had Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn teach me. ~ Helena Christensen

I'm for tax reform, not tax increases. ~ Grover Norquist

Reform of the medical liability system should be considered as part of a comprehensive response to surging medical malpractice premiums that endanger Americans' access to quality medical care. ~ Lincoln Chafee

In school, the year was the marker. Fifth grade. Senior year of high school. Sophomore year of college. Then after, the jobs were the marker. That office. This desk. But now that school is over and I've been working at the same place in the same office at the same desk for longer than I can truly believe, I realize: You have become the marker. This is your era. And it's only if it goes on and on that will have to look for other ways to identify the time. ~ David Levithan

I think that there's a particular type of person who goes into children's theater, and then goes into theater in high school. There was something about the guys I knew in theater, we were all very vulnerable. You could tell that at some point we were made fun of. ~ Craig Brewer

I just kept telling myself that ultimately, the money that my grandparents had put away to go into my college fund, that they were investing for me to go to school and get this education, it had to be worth something. ~ G-Eazy

Stay in school. Lie to your teachers, but stay in school. ~ Billy Corgan

I used to spend my nights oversewing dresses for a local dressmaker in order to pay for my school equipment. ~ Azzedine Alaia

Former spider boys came from all walks of life - they ranged from homeless street kids and school dropouts to decent kids, but the best ones were those who had gone anywhere and everywhere to search out and capture their fighting spiders; they even ventured into dangerous bushes infested with black mambas. These boys were risk-takers and crowd-pullers, always on the move, always looking for worthy opponents with which to fight their spiders. ~ Ming Cher

... and that did it. That brought those depthless blue eyes within a foot, perhaps six inches, maybe even closer, and something happened inside Enrique, like a guitar string suddenly unstrung. There was a shock and a vibration in his heart, a palpable break inside the cavity of his chest. He had dropped out of high school and never took a class in anatomy, but he did know that the cardiovascular system wasn't supposed to react as if it were the source and center of feeling. And yet he would have sworn to all and sundry - not that he expected to admit it to anyone - that Margaret, or at least her bright blue eyes, had just snapped his brittle heart. ~ Rafael Yglesias

I'm one of the school of people who don't do research of the reality of the thing or the unreality of the thing. In all the movies I've done, I've never done any research. ~ Billy Connolly

On Algebra - We're a month into it, and I'm planning to start a real protest movement, one to have X and Y removed from the alphabet. Z is also suspect as far as I'm concerned ... Damn it! They put a man on the moon; can't they find some way to end the scourge of Algebra? ~ Huston Piner

Here is your great soul - the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself. ~ Seneca.

It is our job as parents, to instill principles and values in our children. So that when they depart from you, those principles and values won't depart from them. Mallory Bullard, a street soldier from the old school. ~ Drexel Deal

I'm a troglodyte. I think that's the word for it. Like an old school weird person who throws bricks at their computers. ~ Joanne Kelly

…But what it comes down to for me is that it's not an ideal world. There are people out there who torture, burn, maim, bomb and enslave others. Mostly because of religion and territory, and they're not going to be dissuaded from their path. Kids should be able to chase butterflies and feed ducks and go to school without fearing a bomb or a bullet. Or worse. And I guess that's why I do what I do… ~ Bronwyn Parry

I think you get out of film school what you put into it. If you don't care about making movies, film school will do you no good. ~ Richard King

But for the rest of us, cool has a shelf life. If you're a quarterback in high school, you're cool. But ten years later, working as a sullen bouncer at the only nightclub in town, your "cool" is on life support. Which is why so many young girls who never said no end up with losers in pants hanging below their asses and no known income to speak of. These cads were charming in high school; now they're as useless as shoulder pads on a snake. ~ Greg Gutfeld

Businesses are not paid to reform customers. They are paid to satisfy customers. ~ Peter Drucker

I'm not going to say I'm not a fan, but I'm a fan of house music, essentially, and kind of indie, and I was always into the kind of sub-pop Seattle Mud Honey and Pearl Jam kind of sound. But my kind of big love was house music ever since I was 15/16, going to raves when I was 15 or 16 years old and not going to school, like a naughty boy. ~ Nick Frost

I'm honored when young people say they've gone to school on slide guitar with my records. But people get their influence from my live shows and records and YouTube, not me personally. I walk around with a hat on. People don't know it's me. ~ Bonnie Raitt

A poor teacher complains, an average teacher explains, a good teacher teaches, a great teacher inspires. ~ Hosur Narasimhaiah

Acknowledgements!
My thanks to Hollywood
When you showed me John Rambo
Stitching up his arm with no anaesthetic
And giving them "a war they won't believe"
I knew then my calling, the job for me

Thanks also to the recruitment adverts
For showing me soldiers whizzing around on skis
And for sending sergeants to our school
To tell us of the laughs, the great food, the pay
The camaraderie

I am, dear taxpayer, forever in your debt
You paid for my all-inclusive pilgrimage
One year basking in the Garden of Eden
(I haven't quite left yet)

Thanks to Mum and thanks to Dad
Fuck it,
Thanks to every parent
Flushing with pride for their brave young lads
Buying young siblings toy guns and toy tanks
Waiting at the airport
Waving their flags ~ Danny Martin

We have never lost a crew member on the space station, but of course, the Columbia accident. I was - I'd already been an astronaut for a decade when the crew of Columbia was killed. And I went through test pilot school. Rick Husband and I were out at Edwards at test pilot school together. He was the commander of Columbia. ~ Chris Hadfield

The job of the school is to teach so well that family background is no longer an issue. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. Increasing the scale, the depth of content, the universal themes. And I don't care what those themes are- they're yours to uncover and stand behind-so long as, at the very least, there is courage. ~ Marisha Pessl

I have always loved astronomy, and being an astronomer once lurked in the back of my mind. But I was never good at algebra. In fact, I flunked it twice in high school. ~ Natalie Babbitt

Julian Singh, he said, extending his hand. No one (a) introduces himself and then (b) extends his hand to be shaken while (c) wearing shorts and (d) knee socks and (e) holding a genuine leather book bag on (f) the first day of school. ~ E.L. Konigsburg

I went to law school and took a law degree, and counseled all my clients to plead insanity. ~ Warren Zevon

The highest development was in the Egyptian and Cabalistic systems, and it was blended with Christian thought in the schools of the Neo-Platonists and the Gnostics ... Its studies were only kept alive during the Dark Ages among the Jews who were the chief exponents of its Cabalistic aspect ... and it is still alive today. ~ Dion Fortune

Defining by a general law the expenditures on the ... school ... is a very different thing from appointing the state as educator of the people. Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school. ~ Karl Marx

These elected officials pursued the offices they hold and asked us for our votes. We gave them our votes. That's a sacred trust, and they have betrayed us. ~ Mark M. Bello

The presentation of mathematics in schools should be psychological and not systematic. The teacher, so to speak, should be a diplomat. He must take account of the psychic processes in the boy in order to grip his interest, and he will succeed only if he presents things in a form intuitively comprehensible. A more abstract presentation is only possible in the upper classes. ~ Felix Klein