Howard Gardner Quotes

We aspire to be equal opportunity, but all across the country where a student is born, their race, their class affect where they end up.

Very few charter schools are being created in some of the best school districts in the state. If you're an educational innovator, that isn't where the greatest need is.

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.

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

Education will not cure all the problems of society, but without it no cure for any problem is possible.

Federal, state and municipal policies have isolated many children, especially in urban districts, into schools that are segregated by race, class and income.

You know there's a problem [with the education system] when you realize that out of the three R’s, only one begins with an R.

I am particularly interested in primary education because the state of affairs in primary education in this country is a cause for concern.

I see education in the U.K. as a civil rights struggle.

The ALAS Foundation was born as a consequence and a continuation of what we are doing with Pies Descalzos. I started the Pies Descalzos foundation in Colombia when I was 18, and since then, I have been very involved in the crusade for education.

That's why I created the New America School - to fill the cracks in our public education system.

We have a locale-based education system; we have increasing economic segregation. We clearly need a larger federal program to try to help disadvantaged districts.

Of course, the American education system is very inefficient in many ways compared to other countries in Europe or Japan, but it works in such a way that at least the few people who are going onto unusual careers and science can manage to get into that, even though they go through an earlier stage that doesn't give them much.

You don't fight injustice by asking to become part of the system that committed the injustice against you in the first place. That's like a freed slave striving to become a slave owner.

What I see is democratizing education will change everything.

In America we have big issues with education - in impoverished communities especially. I work with Teach For All, and so we're encouraging more people to get into teaching.

Merit pay has failed repeatedly, and it's no surprise. When you base teacher pay on standardized test scores, you won't improve education; you just promote the high-stakes testing craze that's led parents, students and educators to shout 'Enough!' all across the country.

Beginning with the No Child Left Behind law and continuing today with Race to the Top, the federal emphasis on standardized assessments has become so excessive that it has modified state and district behavior in troubling ways.

Too often, our most vulnerable students - English-language learners, immigrants, poor kids, teenage parents, students with behavioral problems and learning disabilities - fall through the cracks.

When you don't have equality of opportunity because you don't have equal access to education, it just seems so outrageous. It weakens our economy and leads to more inequality.

There are a lot of children in our country that, because of their neighborhood or socio-economic status, do not have the opportunity to attend a good school that will prepare them for life's challenges.

We cannot, as a country, improve economically, socially, and culturally without quality education.

Canadians would not tolerate it if they really knew there was a whole generation of aboriginal Canadians who have a chance at a better education and are being denied it.

The need is schools dedicated exclusively to the rural segment. If we have a child from a village and a city studying in the same class room, the former is bound to lag behind because children from the urban areas have a better start.

Suffice it to say that our over-reliance on testing is based largely on habit, wishful thinking, and leaps of faith.