Hank Johnson

Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.

When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.

That’s the way to study history-by noting evolutionary processes.

Sometimes you get educated by being really bothered by things and you have to educate yourself on how to respond.

I went to college on an art scholarship at the American Academy of Art, but the education comes from being passionate about objects, spaces, colors and the way they affect your senses.

Education not just preparation for life, but part if life itself-a continuous art.

Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read, he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.

In the schoolroom her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness.

My first task is to help students reject 18 years of poor learning that teaches them that knowledge is a product rather than a process.

Women who earn a certificate or degree from a community college, especially in STEM-related field, will be ready to move into a good-paying job in the growing global economy. Community colleges also offer mentorship and support that goes far beyond the classroom.

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. Our requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such as this all require the maximum development of every young American’s capacity. The human mind is our fundamental resource.

I mean, look, teachers don’t do their job for the money, obviously, because we pay them ridiculously little amounts for what they put in. Most of them come out of their own pocket for materials and things to help the children and all that.

My one thing is I continue to be interested and want to be a student. I don’t want to be a master. When I’m learning something, I’m in my element.

Most of all we need an education system which will create an educated mind. This is a mind not simply a repository of information and skills, but a mind that is a source of creative skepticism, characterized by a willingness to challenge old assumptions and to be challenged, a spaciousness of outlook, and convictions that are deeply held, but which new facts and new experiences can always modify. It means an educational system which does not simply equip the students to adjust to society, but which enables the student to challenge and to modify, and at times reject, if necessary, the received wisdom of his elders.

As a kid I had a hard time reading in school. I was the kid who would go one period a day to the class for kids with learning disabilities.