Barack Obama Quotes

In the US, the problem is primary and secondary education. We've had such an increase in inequality because a quarter of American kids don't finish high school!

Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education.

We can't accept that it's O.K. if only some kids get to go to college.

In some states, not even 50 percent of black boys finish high school.

Without affirmative action I could never have attended Yale University. Without affirmative action Barack Obama would never have gotten into Colombia and Harvard Law school

America has a terrible educational problem in the sense that we have too many youngsters not finishing school. A third of our kids don't finish high school, 50 percent of minorities don't finish high school.

I think that one of the greatest challenges we have today is around education. One of the things that is dividing us more and more is whether you have good prospects or you don't. Do you live a neighborhood where the schools are good? If you don't, your kids may not read until the time they're in third grade. Do you at least have access to a community college that will give you job training skills so that if you don't go for four years you will at least come out with a decent job and a decent wage. Too many people don't have that opportunity.

Unfortunately, race still determines too much, often determines where people live, determines what kind of education in their public schools they can get, and, yes, it determines how they're treated in the criminal justice system.

Children don't drop out of high school when they are 16, they do so in the first grade and wait 10 years to make it official.

The United States Office of Education has likewise been guilty of spreading racial equality propaganda. In a report to the press, Dr. John W. Studebaker, head of the Office of Education, and his Negro assistant, Dr. Ambrose Caliver, who is racial adviser in the office of Education, called upon the colleges and universities of the South to open their doors to Negro students

Schoolbooks may not be interchanged between white and colored schools.

Integration in the fields of education, housing, transportation and public accommodations will be of limited extent and duration so long as fundamental economic inequality along racial lines persist.

It shall be unlawful for any person, corporation, or association of persons to maintain or operate any college, school, or institution where persons of the white and negro races are both received as pupils for instruction.

We used to be the country with the highest percentage of college graduates. We are no more and the gap is widening.

The bottom line is that our kids deserve a brighter future. They deserve an opportunity to attend college, regardless of their wealth or class. And our economy needs an educated work force that can compete in the global race for jobs.

I went to Harvard College, grew up in Boston, and went to high school in Boston.

As more and more minority groups fill our nation's classrooms, what can we do to even the separate-but-forever-unequal playing field? Now that's a question many very smart people have spent decades trying to answer.

I think about the milestones from my childhood and what it will be like to watch our kids go through them. Taking Riley to her first day of school was a whirlwind. I can't imagine what middle school is going to be like, and high school, and graduation.

As an older generation, we need to give all our young people love and the possibility of realizing their dreams. For instance, if I get really political, the fact that some people can't go to college, can't even think about college, that's not American; that's not right.

I remember I used to go school with guys who couldn't afford notebooks, pens, paper: the necessary tools needed in order to survive in school. It's a lot of kids in Gary who are at a disadvantage without that.

Minnesota's diversity should be its greatest strength, but our neglect of nonwhite students has stifled our progress toward growth and equity.

I just heard that some lead was coming into Newark into schools, and I asked the question, "Whose schools?" They said, "The Black and the Brown." Is that an accident? I don't think so. We are being designed to be destroyed - and unless we see that, and come together as a people under vicious attack we will suffer the consequences of evil that's in high places.

If you're going to compare a middle-income black kid with a middle- income white kid, and, say, you control for family background, family education, and family income, and if this middle-income black kid doesn't score as well as the white kid on the test, then I say, look, you haven't taken into consideration the cumulative effect of living in a segregated neighborhood and going to a de facto segregated school. You're denying a position at Harvard or some other place to a kid that really could make it. That's why I support affirmative action that's based on both class and race.

I started out as a molecules kid. In high school and early college I loved chemistry, but I gradually shifted toward physics, which seemed cleaner - odorless, in fact.

Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million - more than one-quarter of all America - have not even finished high school.