Quotes About Education

Read books and keep informed. The conversation can get old if you don't have some good new topics to bring to the table.

When I was super young, we were hiking to the top of the 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado. You know, when I was in my early teens, we went to Bolivia and climbed to the tops of the highest mountains in the Alps. You know, those experiences were so exciting that when I came back to school, I was actually quite bored.

Some of the Tories say, 'She left school at 16, she doesn't have a university degree, what does she know about education?' I say, I may not have a degree - but I have a Masters in real life.

If the Tories are serious about ensuring everyone has the opportunity to learn, regardless of their background, then the only thing they need to review is Labour's manifesto.

The problem of forgetting might not torment us so much if we could only convince ourselves that remembering isn't important. Perhaps the things we learn - words, dates, formulas, historical and biographical details - don't really matter. Facts can be looked up. That's what the Internet is for.

We are teaching white children to hate themselves. We are teaching nonwhite children that it's OK to bully and torment white children because of the color of their skin.

Looking back, I realise it wasn't only gym I dreaded at school. Every class was a torment. It wasn't knowledge I objected to but instruction. Why couldn't they just tell us what books to read and leave us to get on and read them?

I wanted to be a physical therapist because I had torn up my knee and thought it was interesting with the rehab and whatever. I did kinesiology, and after the first four days of class, I dropped out because I was like, 'This ain't the class for me!'

My art teacher was really encouraging me, because he really liked that I could draw. I felt very torn. At that time, I had to pick one, and I felt much more confident in the arts than I did in chemistry. My big thing was that I actually wanted to be like Jacques Cousteau.

When we went to school, we had the odd tornado drill.

I was fortunate to find an extraordinary mathematics and applied mathematics program in Toronto.

My mother taught in the schools in Toronto Centre.

Making sure that when my child went to school people were enlightened enough not to torture them, you know?

Going to the blackboard at school was the worst torture.

When I was energy and climate change secretary I sat around a cabinet table with Gove, and he couldn't help playing to the Tory climate-sceptic audience. As education secretary, he tried to ban climate change from the geography curriculum. After an angry exchange of letters with me, he eventually backed down.

I really like singing. I believe that if I wasn't a good singer, I would have been tossed out of school.

This means that no single logic is strong enough to support the total construction of human knowledge.

Public schools in the late '80s and early '90s were a total mess... we felt that if I was going to have a good educational option in my life, I would have to go to a public school district that actually served its children.

I found that I was just hopeless at school. It was just a total bore. First, I passed in art and English, and then just art. Then I passed out.

Cleanliness is very important. If you let kids make a total mess in the kitchen and then leave, you're not really teaching them anything.

I cannot believe that my generation may very well have been the last one to have sex education in schools that was truly the complete and total package. I mean what are we doing? Are we in the future, but acting like it's The Dark Ages?

When I enrolled in college at age 19, I had a total of eight years of formal classroom education. As a result, I was not comfortable with formal lectures and receiving regular homework assignments.

I didn't go to university; I hardly went to school, but I grew up among people well versed in Henry James and Proust, and just felt this endless, total inadequacy.

Each generation is smarter than the generation before, and they need total diversion and encouragement and things to think about.