Best Quotes by Diane Ravitch (Top 10)

  1. Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.
  2. American Education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will Stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so?
  3. Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves?
  4. Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.
  5. There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose, they represent an unusually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic institutions.
  6. Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or or the police department
  7. Congress and state legislatures should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations.
  8. Unless the schools provide our children with a vision of human possibility that enlightens and empowers them with knowledge and taste, they will simply play their role in someone else's marketing schemes. Unless they understand deeply the sources of our democracy, they will take it for granted and fail to exercise their rights and responsibilities.
  9. Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.
  10. What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of new evidence? Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality. When we are too certain of our opinions, we run the risk of ignoring any evidence that conflicts with our views. It is doubt that shows we are still thinking, still willing to reexamine hardened beliefs when confronted with new facts and new evidence.

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