Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality. Henry Fielding, 1707-54, Joseph Andrews
One of the greatest benefits that God ever gave me is that He sent me so sharp and severe parents and so gentle a schoolmaster. Lady Jane Grey, 1537-54
I remember once going to a school to plant a tree and there were four hundred kids in this school and they all had Lenny Henry beards on and they were all were better at doing me than I was. David Bellamy
Better build schoolrooms for ‘the boy’,
Than cells and gibbets for ‘the man’. Eliza Cook, A Song for the Ragged Schools, 1853
School violence – with all the money being spent on security guards, metal detectors and cameras, it’s now harder to get into class than it is to get into the Prom Queen’s pants ... The truth about school violence is not what you’d expect after listening to the fearmongers in the news. According to the Justice Department violence in schools has dropped 40% since 1992. Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s1e2: Safety Hysteria, Showtime 2003
A world core curriculum might seem utopian today. By the end of the year 2000 it will be a down-to-earth daily reality in all the schools of the world ... The underlying philosophy upon which the Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teachings set forth in the books of Alice A Bailey ... The school is now certified as a United Nations Associated School providing education for international cooperation and peace. Robert Muller
Fingerprinting – it is being done; there are schools now where [children are] fingerprinted in order to get their school dinners; they make it a game for the children. Brian Gerrish, lecture British Constitution Group 2009, The ‘State of the Nation’
If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England. And Wales. And Northern Ireland. Anthony Crosland, 1918-77, British Labour politician
This is the story of a dream. The dream of giving the very best education to Britain’s brightest children however humble their background. The grammar schools were set up to deliver this dream. The Grammar School: A Secret History I, BBC 2012
For the grammar schools the key to success lay in the pursuit of excellence. ibid.
Britain’s oldest grammar schools date back to the fourteenth century. ibid.
The new and radical ideas of the sixties would sweep them [grammar schools] away. ibid.
That demise is at the heart of an educational debate that still rages today. The Grammar School: A Secret History II, BBC 2012
The grammar schools created a generation of upwardly mobile high-flyers who helped transformed Britain. ibid.
By 1964 there were 1,300 grammar schools in Britain. ibid.
An ever widening gap between state education and the public schools. ibid.
I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing. Neil Gaiman, The Sandman vol 9: The Kindly Ones
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it. (School & Wisdom) Albert Einstein
One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year. Albert Einstein
To me the worst thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils and produces a subservient subject. Albert Einstein
What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education. Harold Howe
A long time ago, there was no such thing as school, and children spent their days learning a trade, a phrase which here means ‘standing around doing tedious tasks under the instruction of a bossy adult’. In time, however, people realized that the children could be allowed to sit, and the first school was invented. Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid
The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered. Jean Piaget
To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone. Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else’s image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself. Bell Hooks
She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it. Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! It drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay. William Blake
Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave. Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary. Libba Bray
I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn’t study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people. Al Gore
I don’t believe in school prayer. I think it’s total nonsense ... Who is the teacher there that is going to have them pray? And is the teacher going to be Catholic or Mormon or Episcopalian or what? It just causes all sorts of problems. And what are the kids praying about anyway? Does it really matter, does praying in school ... What are you doing it for? The whole thing just opens up all sorts of elements of discussion. I think it’s crazy. Charles M Schulz
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn’t take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no-one really cares very much whether he learns it or not. H L Mencken
It’s not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It’s a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life. John Holt
I won’t say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like ‘What I’m Going to be if I Grow Up’. Lenny Bruce
The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has – I’m not kidding. J D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent. George Bernard Shaw
One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated. Thomas More, Selected Writings
But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret. Ronald Reagan
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country. Kurt Vonnegut
The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. Franklin D Roosevelt