Geoffrey Canada Quotes

It's easy to have faith when everything is going great. The real test of faith is when you're facing something that only your faith in God will get you through.

When kids know that you refuse to let them fail ... they don't give up as easy. So sometimes they don't have it inside, [but] they're like,'You know, I don't want to do this, but I know my mother's going to be mad.'That matters to kids, and it helps get them through.

Monsters work seven days a week and don't take vacations.

Let's stop teaching to the middle and start teaching to the student.

Over the past five years, I've met several presidents, several secretaries of education ... and there is no plan. If you want to save your children, you're going to have to do it yourself. It's just us.

Middle-class families know education begins at birth.

I want to be a children’s hero… Children need heroes because heroes give hope; without hope they have no future.

You have to be prepared to think outside the box...Stand back and think about what we could do creativity. We've got to do that to push the field forward.

There is an educational cliff we are walking over right this very second.

One of the things that sells music is when the artist is looked at as someone who's come up from the streets. Not just any streets, but the toughest, meanest streets of the urban ghetto. And that's called 'street credibility'.

Movies portray men as tough guys.

Many schools today are sacrificing social studies, the arts and physical education so children can cover basic subjects like math, English and science.

If you raise a child, there's no time, you can't be a great parent.

When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching... It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters.

Why is it that when we had rotary phones, when we were having folks being crippled by polio, that we were teaching the same way then that we're doing right now?

An extended school day gives administrators the ability to ensure children get a well-rounded education.

When you see a great teacher, you are seeing a work of art.

Education is the only billion dollar industry that tolerates abject failure.

Boys want to grow up to be like their male role models. And boys who grow up in homes with absent fathers search the hardest to figure out what it means to be male.

Osama Bin Laden is not going to come here and destroy America. Our education system is doing that just fine.

The rates of soda consumption in our poorest communities cannot be explained by individual consumer preferences alone, but rather are linked to broader issues of access and affordability of healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods, and to the marketing efforts of soda companies themselves.

I graduated from Bowdoin College and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Then I left and took a job teaching really poor inner-city white kids in Boston. It was interesting to me because I'd never been around poor whites before.

One of the saddest days of my life was when my mother told me Superman did not exist. I was like what do you mean he's not real. And she thought I was crying because it’s like Santa Claus is not real and I was crying because there was no one coming with enough power to save us.

Build an organization that can tackle the tough things and keep moving.

When the safety of America is threatened, we will spend any amount of money. The real safety of our nation is preparing this next generation so that they can take our place [in] thinking and technology and democracy.