Michael Leunig Quotes

America is the best half-educated country in the world.

The traditional story of economists has been to say education explains what the returns are to school. I say, 'Okay, that's fine, but what explains the education? How much is just a matter of my giving you a poor kid versus a rich kid?'

From kindergarten to graduation, I went to public schools, and I know that they are a key to being sure that every child has a chance to succeed and to rise in the world.

We have a large underclass in Britain, and a fairly low standard of education. Our best universities are extremely good, but a very significant proportion of the British population that comes out of compulsory schooling with very low standards of education.

One of the great failings of our education system is that we tend to focus on those who are succeeding in exams, and there are plenty of them. But what we should also be looking at, and a lot more urgently, is those who fail.

Unless we make education a priority, an entire generation of Americans could miss out on the American dream.

In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.

Public schooling is welfare for the middle class.

I'm not arguing for a return to the grammar school system, but there must be a way of identifying bright kids from ordinary backgrounds and giving them a world-class education.

People's fates in life are decided largely by their schools.

Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.

I am very fortunate I can send my kids to private school, but everybody does not have the money. If you cannot get your kid in a good school today, your kids are going to be behind the eight ball.

I look back and see the kids who made it through school - it made a huge difference in their lives, which made me believe in the power of public education and what it can do for individuals and communities and the state.

The Time to Succeed Coalition brings together an unprecedented group of leaders from education and business, communities and academia to say that it is time to strike the shackles of an outdated school calendar from our disadvantaged schools.

Some liberals think that describing any role that education gaps play in creating income inequality is some sort of sellout - that, in essence, you're telling the middle class, 'Tough luck; you should have stayed in college.'

I came to accept during my freshman year that many of the gaps in my knowledge and understanding were simply limits of class and cultural background, not lack of aptitude or application as I'd feared.

I grew up in a very progressive family and with a great educational system, and I asked myself, 'Why doesn't everybody have these opportunities for a good education? So why not give back to these kids who didn't grow up with the same privileges I had?'

If we do not provide education for every single American, we are consigning those without an education to second-class status.

If we don't empower families to be able to have a quality education, then their children - for the first time in American history, truly the first time - will not have the same economic opportunities.

Too many people believe that the education deficit is someone else's problem.

We still have two public school systems in the United States: One for the haves and one for the have-nots.

Some men will be always able to pay more for their children's education than others; and that those children will, inevitably, win in the struggle of life.

The Scholastic Aptitude Tests do not predict success any better than the socio economic status of the parents.

The public education system works for children of families like mine but it does not work for the children of families who I represent …

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