Literature is an inquiry into the deepest yearnings of the human spirit.
Music gives us a language that cuts across the disciplines, helps us to see connections and brings a more coherent meaning to our world.
Education must prepare students to be independent, self-reliant human beings. But education, at its best, also must help students go beyond their private interests, gain a more integrative view of knowledge, and relate their learning to the realities of life.
In the end, excellence in education means excellence in teaching, and if this country would give the status to first grade teachers that we give to full professors, this one act alone would revitalize the nation’s schools.
Education is a seamless web: one level of learning relates to every other.
In an era when careerism dominates the campus, is it too much to expect students to go beyond their private interests, learn about the world around them, develop a sense of civic and social responsibility, and discover how they can contribute to the common good?
It is no longer enough to simply read and write. Students must also become literate in the understanding of visual images. Our children must learn how to spot a stereotype, isolate a social cliche, and distinguish facts from propaganda, analysis from banter and important news from coverage.
The connectedness of things is what the great university is all about, and I believe the great university in the coming century will be described as a community of scholars.
To put it simply, school readiness means creating in this country a public love of children.
Research must continue to be the centerpiece of intellectual life, and our commitment to research must grow, because our problems are growing.
A poor surgeon hurts one person at a time. A poor teacher hurts 130.
When all is said and done we simply must make teaching in this country an honorable profession-since it’s in the classrooms of America where the battle for excellence, ultimately, will be won or lost.
The assumption of all education is that learning will be directed toward constructive ends and I’m convinced that colleges should support students in their determination to be useful, self-sufficient, and productive.
As I watched my grandfather work with people who were impoverished, I began to understand that to be truly human, one must serve.
To push for excellence today without continuing to push for access for less privileged students is to undermine the crucial but incomplete gains that have been made. Equity and excellence cannot be divided.
Based upon the pictures, I concluded that about 60 percent of all college classes in the United States are held outside, underneath a tree, usually by a gently flowing stream.
I am suggesting that quality in undergraduate education means giving students a perspective that is global.