Top 100 Quotes About Public Schools
#1. A society - any society - is defined as a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions: public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.
Robert Reich
#2. My time at the Denver Public Schools taught me there is no harder, or more important, job than being a teacher.
Michael Bennet
#3. Failure to recognize learning styles in public schools has promoted a standard lecture format for teaching, which has frustrated the learning of many.
Rick Blackwood
#4. I do not believe any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States.
Thomas A. Edison
#5. Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational "excellence," I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.
Thomas Sowell
#6. Why don't we have enough teachers of math and science in the public schools? One answer is well, if they knew the subject well, they'd also know enough to work for Google or Goldman Sachs or God knows where.
James Harris Simons
#7. The majority of the high schools and the public schools in N.Y.C. don't even have band programs. Hip-hop in a lot of ways is an outgrowth of a lack of instruments and a desire to play music, so we can't really fault the kids for that.
Wynton Marsalis
#8. It is obvious to any observer that in every western country the increase of importance of public schools has been at least coincident with the relaxation of older family ties.
John Dewey
#9. You won't believe what our kids are eating in the public schools. It's just nuts.
Mary McCormack
#10. Its amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools.
Rick Santorum
#11. I hope that schools have changed since I was a little girl. My memory of the teaching of the public schools is that it showed the brutal incomprehension of children.
Isadora Duncan
#12. [The notion of separating church and state with such policies as disallowing prayer in public schools] is a deception from Satan.
Joyce Meyer
#13. I am old enough to remember when America's K-12 public schools were the best in the world. I am a proud graduate of them, and I credit much of my success to what I learned in Detroit Public Schools and at Michigan State University.
Eli Broad
#14. When will the public cease to insult the teacher's calling with empty flattery? When will men who would never for a moment encourage their own sons to enter the work of the public schools cease to tell us that education is the greatest and noblest of all human callings?
William Bagley
#15. God has virtually been made an illegal subject in that state institution most devoted to the shaping of the minds and values of our people - the public schools.
Pat Swindall
#16. We can hardly complain about prayer being taken from the public schools if we are not praying in our Christian homes.
Kristen Welch
#17. Nowadays, with history not being taught anymore in American public schools, self-esteem is taking its place.
Dennis Miller
#18. The ACLU's various policies regarding religious freedom in public schools are a revealing collection of anti-religious bias.
F. LaGard Smith
#19. Grammar schools are public schools without the sodomy.
Tony Parsons
#20. In the government schools, which are referred to as public schools, Indian policy has been instituted there, and its a policy where they do not encourage, in fact, discourage, critical thinking and the creation of ideas and public education.
Russell Means
#21. Anyone who fears, as I do, that today's public schools are dangerously close to being irrelevant must read this book. The authors provide a road map-and a lifeline-showing how schools can prosper under the most difficult conditions. It is a welcome departure from all the school bashing.
John Merrow
#22. Many well-meaning intelligent people have argued since the May 17, 1954, decision of the United States Supreme Court outlawing segregation in the public schools that communication between the races has broken down.
Benjamin E. Mays
#23. Almost all the students who make it to Caltech, one of the best scientific universities in the world, come from public schools. So it can be done.
Thomas L. Friedman
#24. I grew up going to public school, and they were huge public schools. I went to a school that had 3,200 kids, and I had grade school classes with 40-some kids. Discipline was rigid. Most of the learning was rote. It worked.
P. J. O'Rourke
#25. When state funding for Irvine public schools began to diminish some time ago, my Irvine Company colleagues helped me to provide private funding support for continuation of basic science, art and music programs that had been eliminated by lack of state funding.
Donald Bren
#26. I would like to see more African-American singers as part of our opera companies. If you take music and the arts out of the public schools, then you're going to lose a lot of people that you might have discovered were talented, very early.
Jessye Norman
#27. Me, I was waiting tables of 13 and married at 19. I graduated from public schools, and taught elementary school.
Elizabeth Warren
#28. This is an extremely foolish and stupid and idiotic kind of attitude - to expect theatres to make money. Do the public schools make money? Do libraries make money? Does the zoo make money? D o the sewers make money? It's a community service.
John Hirsch
#29. If we were to remove the Bible from public schools we would be wasting so much time punishing crimes and taking so little pains to prevent them.
Benjamin Rush
#30. Our public schools need to be in the control of parents and the community, as opposed to businessmen who see the $23 billion budget as a means to giving no-bid contracts to their cronies.
Charles Barron
#31. I am most proud of what sfCiti has accomplished with the 'Circle the Schools' program, which engages companies to enter into long-term partnerships with San Francisco public schools, using an adopt-a-school model.
Ron Conway
#32. American [public] schools are failing because they are organized according to a bureaucratic, monopolistic model; their organizing principle is basically the same as that of a socialist economy.
David Boaz
#33. Every successive generation becomes a living memorial of our public schools, and a living example of their excellence.
Joseph Story
#34. What are called 'public schools' in many of America's wealthy communities aren't really 'public' at all. In effect, they're private schools, whose tuition is hidden away in the purchase price of upscale homes there, and in the corresponding property taxes.
Robert Reich
#35. The phenomenon of home schooling is a wonderful example of the American can-do attitude. Growing numbers of parents have become disenchanted with government-run public schools. Many parents have simply taken matters into their own hands, literally.
Steve Forbes
#36. If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.
Susan B. Anthony
#37. I was born in Columbia in 1954, the year the Supreme Court invalidated racial segregation in public schools. I visited frequently but did not live there.
Randall Kennedy
#38. For digital natives, public schools are jails
Bing Gordon
#39. Public schools helped create the idea of America and inculcate Americans with a few rudiments of knowledge. To judge by that very American item, the Internet, a few rudiments is all anyone cares to have.
P. J. O'Rourke
#40. Our public schools began as ministries of the church; now it is time to return them to the Lord.
Jay Alan Sekulow
#41. Creationists who want religious ideas taught as scientific fact in public schools continue to adapt to courtroom defeats by hiding their true aims under ever changing guises.
Eugenie Scott
#42. It is fast becoming an article of political faith that financing America's public schools by way of the local property tax is a shame and a civic scandal.
M. Stanton Evans
#43. It is not envy or malice, as so many people think, but utter despair that has persuaded many educational reformers to recommend the abolition of the English public schools.
Peter Medawar
#44. From my grandfather's father, I learned to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home, and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent.
Marcus Aurelius
#45. So long as public schools are treated as places that exist to provide guaranteed jobs to members of the teachers' unions, do not be surprised to see American students continuing to score lower on international tests than students in countries that spend a lot less per pupil than we do.
Thomas Sowell
#46. The public schools tend to teach little kids from when they are very young about the whole universe without God and that God cannot be in science. They are indoctrinating children in an atheistic religious view of things.
Ken Ham
#47. To improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together. If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship ...
Mary Wollstonecraft
#48. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.
Henry Fielding
#49. In my opinion, right up there with free public schools, our free public library system is what makes citizenship possible, even what makes America great.
Karen DeCrow
#50. The true value of having Florida Virtual School in this mix is that it creates a gold standard for all providers to meet if they hope to compete for Florida students. This program raises the bar for everybody, even the traditional public schools. And that benefits all our children.
Dan Webster
#51. Our children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal and natural and that perhaps they should try it, and that'll be very soon in our public schools all across the state, beginning in kindergarten.
Michele Bachmann
#52. I wanted to find ways for colleges and universities to become involved with public schools to help young people prepare for college.
Freeman A. Hrabowski III
#53. The public schools shall be free from sectarian influences and, above all, free from any attitude of hostility to the adherents of any particular creed.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#54. But that's just the way it was surviving in America's public schools. Every day was a struggle. Every day was psychological warfare, and if you didn't stay sharp, the system would grind you into human pencil shavings.
Jonathan LaPoma
#55. I hate the fact that public schools like the one I went to have fantastic sports facilities, and state schools don't. That's not fair. That's outrageous.
Clare Balding
#56. We all should know what the Right's agenda is here: privatize education, kill public schools, and transfer the teaching of the young to private entities.
Barry W. Lynn
#57. I think the philosophy in our public schools, and many other institutions today, is that a dose of God is more hazardous to your health than a dose of herpes or drugs.
Cal Thomas
#58. Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
B.F. Skinner
#59. Encourage public schools to teach American children how to code just after they learn to multiply.
Marvin Ammori
#60. Public schools go on year after year. They don't die because they are not alive.
Natalie Goldberg
#61. America's public schools have served their purpose. Free and compulsory education was good for a somewhat unpromising young nation.
P. J. O'Rourke
#62. Many years ago Christian pioneers had to fight savage Indians. Today missionaries of these former cultures are being sent via the public schools to heathenize our children.
Phyllis Schlafly
#63. During the decades after Brown v. Board of Education there was terrific progress. Tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially. During that time the gap between black and white achievement narrowed.
Jonathan Kozol
#64. I am inclined to agree with the Head Master of Eton that paederastic passions among schoolboys 'do no harm'; further, I think them the only redeeming feature of sexual life at public schools.
Aleister Crowley
#65. My mother went to Radcliffe, and rather than just trying to get rich, she wanted to be a teacher and taught for over 30 years in the public schools. She's definitely got some war stories.
Ben Affleck
#66. I see bright kids trapped in public schools that are just warehousing them. As an educator this makes me scared. As Secretary of State, this makes me terrified.
Maria Shriver
#67. Beating up on public schools is not just our nation's favorite blood sport, but also a favorite conversational entertainment of the well-off - like debating the most recent toothsome plot twists of 'Big Love' - who, of course, have no dog in the fight.
Sandra Tsing Loh
#68. Children are free moral agents and have a right to be exposed to a range of beliefs well beyond the rigid doctrinal confines of their parent's faith, and we have an obligation to insist that they be so exposed, at least in public schools, if not elsewhere.
Tim Wise
#69. Study after study affirms what I saw in the classroom every day as superintendent of Denver Public Schools: Nothing makes a bigger difference for student learning than great teaching.
Michael Bennet
#70. When you say you don't think we should have public schools, they can't believe you mean that. You must mean that they should be smaller. But you can't really mean no public schools.
Dave Barry
#71. Far be it for the public schools to teach this, but the U.S.A. was founded on basic Judeo-Christian principles. Don't believe me - take a trip to Washington D.C. and tour the Supreme Court building. There you will see a sculpted copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall.
Bill O'Reilly
#72. John Paul was the first modern pope to grow up in a secular culture: He attended public schools, danced with girls - indeed, as a teenager he had a crush on a beautiful Jewish girl who fled his hometown just ahead of the arrival of the Germans.
Carl Bernstein
#73. My top priority is to stop the cuts to our public schools.
Fred DuVal
#74. 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.
Michael Bennet
#75. Half the Christian churches of New York are trying to ruin the free public schools in order to replace them by religious dogma.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#76. The problem is not that public schools do not work well, but rather that they do. The first goal and primary function of schools is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is the function which we normally label state indoctrination.
Wendy McElroy
#77. Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?
Kurt Vonnegut
#78. The expenses of the paperwork and court fees involved in pursuing the appeal through the courts were not too high. In fact, as I recall, removing prayer from U.S. public schools cost less than $20,000 ... no Christian organization filed a brief in support of our opponents.
William Murray, 1st Earl Of Mansfield
#79. At various points, I've had a massive chip on me shoulder. I had fights about me accent with loads of those fellers you get from third-class public schools. They used to think I was speaking German.
Sid Waddell
#80. 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.
Henry Giroux
#81. Dr. Arnold ... the admired reformer of public schools, came across some cranks who thought it a mistake to flog boys. Anyone reading his outburst of furious indignation against this opinion will be forced to the conclusion that he enjoyed inflicting floggings.
Bertrand Russell
#82. In Barack Obama, we have a great education president who is rebuilding America. His Race to the Top program is doing more to 'spur us' to improve our public schools than anything we've ever done as a nation.
Jim Hunt
#83. 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
#84. It appears that some school officials, teachers, and parents have assumed that religious expression of any type is either inappropriate or forbidden altogether in public schools; however, nothing in the First Amendment converts our public schools into religion-free zones.
William J. Clinton
#85. Drop out of the public schools. The public schools cannot be compromised with.
Timothy Leary
#86. 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
#87. Character issues such as drug abuse are not exclusive to Detroit Public Schools. My reference to substance abuse, not intended to focus on any particular school district, was simply used to illustrate this position.
Kwame Kilpatrick
#88. It is a matter of public shame that while we have now commemorated our hundredth anniversary, not one in every ten children attending Public schools throughout the colonies is acquainted with a single historical fact about Australia.
Henry Lawson
#89. Close Dept. of Education, but don't dismantle public schools.
Ron Paul
#90. Second, when comparing private school and public school test scores, it's like apples and oranges. Public schools have to take everyone, but private schools can be selective. It's not accurate or fair to compare the job they do.
Dennis Moore
#91. Our public schools arbitrarily define science as explaining the world by natural processes alone. In essence, a religion of naturalism is being imposed on millions of students. They need to be taught the real nature of science, including its limitations.
Ken Ham
#92. I grew up believing in meritocracy and the American dream. My parents came here from India. They had no connections. My brother and I went to public schools, and both of us succeeded.
Leila Janah
#93. A young man passes from our public schools to the universities, ignorant almost of the elements of every branch of useful knowledge.
Charles Babbage
#94. As long as American liberals are going to keep announcing that they're embarrassed for their country, how about being embarrassed by our public schools or by our ridiculous trial lawyer culture that other countries find laughable?
Ann Coulter
#95. Women have to be very vigilant, and demand the very best in public schools, health care and pay, those things that men and women of this state value are at risk.
Bev Perdue
#96. At present, black children are more segregated in their public schools than at any time since 1968. In the inner-city schools I visit, minority children typically represent 95 percent to 99 percent of class enrollment.
Jonathan Kozol
#97. In 1962, the Supreme Court banned organized prayer from public schools. Since then, federal, state, and local courts and officials, including public school administrators, have joined in a nationwide search and destroy mission for student religious practices.
Ralph E. Reed Jr.
#98. There were no politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The "negroes" of Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches; and we had ours.
Pat Buchanan
#99. If prayer is to leave the public schools, let the ridicule of prayer leave also.
Boyd K. Packer
#100. I was born and raised in California and benefited from California's excellent public schools, from kindergarten through medical school.
Ami Bera
