Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I just went to your typical public schools, and my dad would take us to the movies every week, or he'd buy scalped tickets to San Antonio Spurs games. I remember I was four or five years old and my parents, who were very young, took us to see The Police in Austin, and Iggy Pop opened.
Jim Crow laws stripped blacks of basic rights. Despite landmark civil rights laws, many public schools were still segregated, blacks still faced barriers to voting, and violence by white racists continued. Such open racism is mostly gone in America, but covert racism is alive and well.
When I was superintendent of Denver Public Schools, I saw the potential of some of our best and brightest students cut short, punished for the actions of others - kids who had grown up and done well in our school system, and kids who know no other home but America. This is unacceptable.
Public schools are not simply being corporatized, they are also subjected increasingly to a militarizing logic that disciplines the bodies of young people, especially low income and poor minorities, and shapes their desires and identities in the service of military values and social relations.
During my time in the state Senate, I've worked to make sure every Kansas child has the support they need to succeed. That means access to good public schools, but it also means strong early childhood programs, an accountable child welfare system to protect kids, and affordable, safe child care.
The bottom line is that the federal government is an important partner in addressing issues like funding our public schools, fixing our crumbling roads and infrastructure, protecting our natural resources and ensuring that healthcare is affordable and protects people with pre-existing conditions.
The push to defund public schools and reroute taxpayer money to charters and private institutions is actually a very clever strategy by the Right Wing, which has always had a great deal of disdain for a system that forces them to pay taxes toward some other kid's non-religious, science-based education.
But you're never taught in schools - we don't teach anyone in public schools that government is the problem. We don't teach anyone in college that government is the problem - except maybe a handful of sort of unique, conservative schools. But mainstream media never talks as if government is the problem.
All socio-political phenomena in the U.K. come laden with the baggage of a class-based theory or two attached to them. In the case of gay Tories, there is one particularly silly variant of the category, which asserts that gayness is bred in public schools and thus fits with Conservatism like hand in glove.
People like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been very busy educating America about just how much socialism we have, from Social Security to Medicare to public schools to public universities, and how much we love that. The truth is that there is no pure socialist or capitalist economy on earth.
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.
Uber is hardly the first company to exploit the financial vulnerability of teachers - and the desperation of public schools more broadly - to score PR points. Amazon, Boeing, Bank of America, and other corporations have played the part of school benefactor, offering everything from reward programs to school supplies.
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.'
Through the 1980s and '90s, evangelicals sought to turn back the forces of secularization. Groups like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition pressed for laws recognizing Christianity's unique place in American life, including laws that would allow prayer in public schools and Christian displays in public places.
I think it goes back to whether or not race and class - that is, race and poverty - is not becoming even more of a constraint. Because with the failing public schools, I worry that the way that my grandparents got out of poverty, the way that my parents became educated, is just not going to be there for a whole bunch of kids.
My education in the public schools of New York City between 1932 and 1944 was an excellent preparation for a life in science. Because of the Depression, these schools were able to attract a remarkably talented and dedicated collection of teachers who encouraged their students to strive for the highest levels of accomplishment.
The public schools in our neighborhood were so bad that the teachers in the school said you shouldn't send your kids here. My mother called around and found a school that was willing to give both me and my brother scholarship money. It's a classic story about black parents wanting more for their kids than they had for themselves.
I've met with titans of Silicon Valley because they're investing in our national expansion. I've had lunch with Claire Danes because she sees DonorsChoose.org as the best way to help students in public schools. I would never, ever rub shoulders with such people if I had followed the typical career path in investment banking or whatever.
I was educated in the Washington public schools and attended the University of Maryland as a day student, graduating in 1938 with a degree in chemistry. After working for the Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan, for a year, I returned to the University of Maryland to take a Master's degree before going on to Yale to pursue a doctorate.