Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.

Unless the schools provide our children with a vision of human possibility that enlightens and empowers them with knowledge and taste, they will simply play their role in someone else's marketing schemes. Unless they understand deeply the sources of our democracy, they will take it for granted and fail to exercise their rights and responsibilities.

Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.

An attack on public education is an attack on democracy.

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?

Congress and state legislatures should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations.

Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.