Diane Ravitch Quotes
An attack on public education is an attack on democracy.
Ravitch, Diane. Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools. Knopf, 2013, p. 323.
The phrase “national care and expense” was one that was seen as precedent for those advocating federal aid to education and a strong Department of Education. However, the majority of Adams contemporaries saw education, even public education, as a local matter. The word “education” or “school” never appeared in the Constitution. Adams was well before his time on this point.
Her call for education for personal responsibility is a real shock to many conservatives who identify Mrs. Roosevelt with the liberal left. But she made this a basic component of her belief structure and the Roosevelt Administration in 1942—long before it ever became part of the conservative program.
There were many opponents to compulsory education especially in the South and rural areas.
Diane Silvers Ravitch is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education. In 2010, she became "an activist on behalf of public schools". Her blog at DianeRavitch.net has received more than 36 million page views since she began blogging in 2012. Ravitch writes for the New York Review of Books.
