P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn't cool.

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

I think there's so much negative influence on children in school settings. It becomes learning by rote to pass a test. It's not contextualized.

Our approach to education has remained largely unchanged since the Renaissance: From middle school through college, most teaching is done by an instructor lecturing to a room full of students, only some of them paying attention.

Now, we don't teach children in schools to be creative. We don't teach them to experiment. We want them to fill in the right answer, tick the right answer in the box.

I went to public school up until junior high.

As the daughter of a schoolteacher, I feel very strongly that the most important thing in school takes place right there in that classroom, and the interaction between the teacher and the child.

Schools still operate as if all knowledge is contained in books, and as if the salient points in books must be stored in each human brain - to be used when needed. The political and financial powers controlling schools decide what these salient points are.

When you introduce competition into the public school system, most studies show that schools start to do better when they are competing for students.

Our office acts like a kind of educational establishment and we are very careful who we educate.

An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home.

Our education system is increasingly embracing a black-and-white way of thinking, in which 'learning' and 'play' are diametrically opposed. 'Learning' is the serious stuff that happens inside a classroom and can be measured via multiple choice questions and a No. 2 pencil. 'Play' is frivolous, fun, and worst of all, optional.

Growing up, I was always in normal public school which is very important in my eyes.

I was home-schooled. My mom wasn't a fan of public school systems.

I went to public school my whole life. It was a performing arts school, so I can't say if it was a typical experience or not, because it's all I know.

I'm not saying standardized tests are the worst ever, but there's an in-between and I don't think we're there yet. That's what I mean when I say I have an issue with it. There's no way a kid can learn in a class with 40 to 45 people. I had the power to get out of that system and pursue things that I wanted to do and I did that.

When you're a kid, your first five or six years, you converge all the time. School is about training that out of you, especially universities.

These day schools did invaluable service in the days of the Colony and Commonwealth, and, indeed, in the early days of the Republic; but to their continuation must undoubtedly be ascribed the tardy recognition of the government and people of the fact that no agency for the education of the masses is as effective as the public school.... There is not one public school building owned by the government or by any city or township.

In public schools, classes are bloated - it's ridiculous.

The problem with public school is not overcrowding in the classroom. The problem is not teacher unions. The problem is not underfunding or lack of computer equipment. The problem is your damn kids.

Teachers alone can't educate young people.

You don't immediately adopt the values and the framework of this, the academically successful world, just because okay now you kids get to go to high school.

I will comprehensively review the education system with my team to create a stable, caring, and inspiring environment for students, parents, teachers, and principals.

I don't agree with boarding school. It's not something that I would do with my children, but I think it's something that kind of exists in England in a traditional way, and you do form very close relationships with the girls you go to school with. But it is a strange thing to live in an environment which is solely female.

I went to a fairly normal, middle-of-the-road public school in a suburb of New Orleans, but it gave me huge opportunities.