Quotes About Schools Out

“And whether or not the educators who are trying to raise up America's students can actually set and meet higher academic standards, our cultural values make their job next to impossible. It's so much easier for pundits and politicians to point out figures and blame the people who are in the trenches every day than it is to get in there with them, or even to find out what actually goes on in those trenches. It's so much easier for parents to blame teachers when their kids get in trouble than to do the heavy lifting required at home to keep kids on track. And it's so much easier for us as a nation to cross our fingers and hope that we'll "get lucky" with the innovative "solutions" being tested on America's schools today than it is for us to roll up our sleeves and invest our own time, talent, and money in the schools that are even now
with or without us
shaping our nation's future.”

— Tony Danza

“The public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period. They're operated as holding pens-miniature jails, really. It's only when black children start breaking out of their pens and bothering white people that society even pays any attention to the issue of whether these children are being educated.”

— Barack Obama

“At times like this it's traditional that a hero comes forth," said the President of the Guild of Assassins. "A dragon slayer. Where is he, that's what I want to know? Why aren't our schools turning out young people with the skills society needs?”

— Terry Pratchett

“At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages, mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing the things that children used to do in their spare time. Let them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have-I believe the English already use the phrase-"parity of esteem." An even more drastic scheme is not impossible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma-Beelzebub, what a useful word!-by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out 'A Cat Sat On A Mat'.”

— C.S. Lewis

“When we black people commit ourselves to living simply as a political action, as a way of breaking the stress caused by unrelenting hedonistic desire for material objects that are not needed for survival, or essential to well-being, we will not be talking about ebonics. We will be out in the streets demanding that the public schools have enough teachers so that all kids, cross color, can read and write in standard English and in Spanish too.”

— Bell Hooks

“The day is past when schools could afford to give sufficient time and attention to the teaching of the ancient languages to enable the student to get that enjoyment out of classical literature that made the lives of our grandfathers so rich.”

— James Loeb

“Acting is a tough industry. There are a lot of kids out there at drama schools and not a lot of money about, especially as the arts are being cut.”

— Phil Daniels

“That would have been taken out of the Munrowe voice two or three generations ago through being educated at schools that modelled themselves on the English public-school system, even if they were in Scotland.”

— Alexander McCall Smith

“Fairy tales are with us day in and day out, not just in commercials, but references in the theater, movies, museums, schools, etc.”

— Jack Zipes

“Having been kept pretty strict in prep schools, I guess I couldn't cope with all the freedom at Yale. I had a wild, wonderful time, got abysmal grades and was bounced out in my freshman year. I then came back the following fall as a repeating freshman, lasted until April and got bounced out again - for the same reason.”

— Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

“How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scares by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred - by economic inequity - faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices.”

— Howard Zinn

“From 20 years of experience hiring artists out of the schools, I know-they get worse every year. They're absolutely ridiculously retarded now.”

— John Kricfalusi

“Most business schools are geared toward churning out investment bankers and management consultants.”

— Vivek Wadhwa

“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

“The Supreme Court has insulted you over and over again, Lord. They've taken your Bible away from the schools. They've forbidden little children to pray. They've taken the knowledge of God as best they can, and organizations have come into court to take the knowledge of God out of the public square of America.”

— Pat Robertson

“I didn't go to Ivy League schools. I dropped out of college to go into movies.”

— Rob Lowe

“It's always nice to get out there and kind of put Boston College on the map, because we're not one of those schools that is seen nationally by everybody.”

— Rich Gunnell

“They are a testament not only to the Afghans' hunger for literacy, but also to their willingness to pour scarce resources into this effort, even during a time of war. I have seen children studying in classrooms set up inside animal sheds, windowless basements, garages, and even an abandoned public toilet. We ourselves have run schools out of refugee tents, shipping containers, and the shells of bombed-out Soviet armored personnel carriers. The thirst for education over there is limitless. The Afghans want their children to go to school because literacy represents what neither we not anyone else has so far managed to offer them: hope, progress, and the possibility of controlling their own destiny.”

— Greg Mortenson

“Switzerland didn't exactly work out. Neither did France. Or Norway." "Three schools?" Hale asked. "Well, technically, five schools-three countries.”

— Ally Carter

“As long as you're just smart enough to do a job and just dumb enough to swallow what they feed you, you're gonna be alright. But if you go beyond that then you're gonna have these grave doubts that give you stomach problems, headachesmake you want to go out and do something else. So, I believe that schools mechanically and very specifically try and breed out any hint of creative thought in the kids that are coming out.”

— Frank Zappa

“There's a perception that's been put out into the marketplace by No Child Left Behind that schools aren't doing enough for kids.”

— Mark Jackson

“The time to talk about it [genetic engineering to improve a baby's genes] in schools and churches and magazines and debate societies is now. If you wait, five years from now the gene doctor will be hanging out the MAKE A SMARTER BABY sign down the street.”

— Arthur Caplan

“I don't like the fact that we're not creating jobs the way we used to create jobs in Pennsylvania. I lament the fact that we're not setting the table for really robust economic development, here in Pennsylvania, where we can do that. I lament the fact that our schools are being hollowed out. We need a fresh start. I think we need to go in a different direction. I think we need a new governor.”

— Tom Wolf

“Why are people so supportive of him [Osama bin Laden] in many countries? Hes been out in these countries for decades building roads, building schools, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful.”

— Patty Murray

“I still use the pronoun she for my publicity materials, and for mainstream media stuff, for two reasons: the first is that I do a lot of work in public schools, and I want those young women and girls to see every kind of she there can be. I want them to see my biceps and my shorn hair and shirt and tie and for some of them to see me as a possibilityI want them to see me living outside of the boxes, because they might be asphyxiating in their own box and need to see there is air out here for them to breathe, that all they have to do is lift the lid a little.”

— Rae Spoon

“In some suburban schools, the curriculum is chock-full of rigorous A.P. courses and the parking lot glitters with pricey SUVs, but one doesn't have to look hard to find students who are starving themselves, cutting themselves, or medicating themselves, as well students who are taking out their frustrations on those who sit lower on the social food chain.”

— Alfie Kohn

“We know today about nutrition and we know about exercise. There's no reason for anybody to be sick and tired, fat and out of shape
it's ridiculous! This has got to be taught in the schools. It's got to be taught in kindergarten. That's when kids should first get the idea that the most important thing in your life is your health and your body.”

— Jack LaLanne

“If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, they will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do”

— Seth Godin

“Israel has the right to shell Palestinian hospitals and schools out of self defense ...”

— Elizabeth Warren

“I changed schools a lot when I was in elementary school because some girls were mean. They were less mean in middle school, because I was doing all right; although this one girl gave me invitations to hand out to her birthday party that I wasn't invited to.”

— Jennifer Lawrence

“In many cases students are never exposed to competing ideas within their families, churches, or Christian schools, and as a result they go out into the world unprepared for the intellectual battles they are about to encounter, especially on secular college campuses.”

— Nancy Pearcey

“And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad.”

— Jerry Falwell

“American politician doesWe're going to bring back God and the Bible and drive the gods of secular humanism right out of the public schools of America.”

— Pat Buchanan

“Catholic schools carry out a great mission, to serve God by building knowledge and character ... By teaching the word of God, you prepare your students to follow a path of virtue.”

— George W. Bush

“I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!”

— Pope Francis

“It is contended that those who have been bred at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Westminster, that the public sentiment within each of those schools is high-toned and manly; that, in their playgrounds, courage is universally admired, meanness despised, manly feelings and generous conduct are encouraged: that an unwritten code of honor deals to the spoiled child of rank, and to the child of upstart wealth an even-handed justice, purges their nonsense out of both, and does all that can be done to make them gentlemen.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“My father had been in the military and he was a weapons specialist, so he had an affinity for weapons but also for the discipline of it. He taught us how to shoot when we were young. He opened up karate schools in the worst parts of the city, on purpose, and then he would systematically clean out a three-block radius, all of the gang-bangers and drug dealers and everybody of nefarious character.”

— Lupe Fiasco

“But lots of emerging racial tensions in California have nothing to do with whites: Filipinos and Samoans are fighting it out in San Francisco high schools. Merced is becoming majority Mexican and Cambodian. They may be fighting in gangs right now, but I bet they are also learning each other's language.”

— Richard Rodriguez

“We have to reach out to churches and schools and help people understand science, and we have to build rapport between scientists and people of faith. Then once we get that understanding and rapport built, then everyone will be on board with climate change.”

— Katharine Hayhoe