Agnes Gund Quotes

I'd like to work on putting art programs back in schools.

When I was in sixth grade, they slashed the budgets for all of our school art programs, so my grandparents enrolled me in art classes at Worcester Art Museum, which I attended from sixth to 12th grade.

Second, when comparing private school and public school test scores, it's like apples and oranges. Public schools have to take everyone, but private schools can be selective. It's not accurate or fair to compare the job they do.

The problems of public schools will not be solved by cutting off the source of their funding, which is what vouchers are.

Tomorrow everybody--or practically everybody--will have had the education of the upper class of yesterday.

Equal access to public education has been achieved. But what is the good of access to a failing school?

This question of free text books in public schools seems to me one that should be given more consideration than has been done in the past. New York City provides them, individual towns and villages do the same, but the vast number of rural schools, particularly in poorer districts, put the burden on the parents to buy the books the children need.

The vast majority of students in this country will continue to attend public schools.

We're not proposing any shifting of funding from public schools to private schools.

I just cannot understand why we can't have better schools. That private schools are the only option for the kind of high-net-worth crowd, I think, is ridiculous. It should be a major initiative. It should be something we're all working on. We have to get our head out of the clouds.

Obviously, this whole 'no child left behind' idea is more rhetoric than actual practice.

Grammar schools are public schools without the sodomy.

What are called 'public schools' in many of America's wealthy communities aren't really 'public' at all. In effect, they're private schools, whose tuition is hidden away in the purchase price of upscale homes there, and in the corresponding property taxes.

I've decided to go for a B.A. in art. It's the shortest route to a degree. I'm thinking about teaching.

I was at the Royal Art School. That was a preparatory school specially for art teachers. You see, it was not so much for the development of artists. But we had there terribly stiff training.

If some student came up and wanted to know where to study painting, you'd want to suggest someplace, but there's no place. I wouldn't know where to send a student to study.

And then the conditions of safety - or lack of safety - for teachers in public schools, and the disparity between public schools and private schools is shameful.

Beating up on public schools is not just our nation's favorite blood sport, but also a favorite conversational entertainment of the well-off - like debating the most recent toothsome plot twists of 'Big Love' - who, of course, have no dog in the fight.

What I'd like to say is that I think the lives of every one of these little kids who are trapped in these unsafe and failing schools are too important, and I'm willing to take the abuse in order to help them.

I have no problems with private schools. I graduated from one and so did my mother. Private schools are useful and we often use public funds to pay for their infrastructures and other common needs.

The system that had grown up in most states is that wealthy districts with an affluent population can afford to spend a lot more on their public school systems than the poorer districts.

The folks who run the poverty industry in this town are worried that kids will get a better education at schools that cost half the amount they spend on the public schools. In their shoes, I'd be worried too.

The sheltering of upper income children in private schools not only accelerates the deterioration of public education, it hides its consequences from precisely those people who could do something about it.

The abolition of the separate school system in the south raises serious practical problems.... We face the abolition of the public school system. Boldness is essential but wisdom is indispensable.

Public education is the great equalizer of America.