I was a union member in my youth as well and I went on strike, and I don't think it solved anything. It only made the situation worse for everyone involved.

I'm a decentralizer. I believe in trusting professionals.

There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged five. Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English.

Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.

We've got a lot of work to do: not only on education, but on the economy, on our tax code, and on reducing our crushing debt.

Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

Yes, many immigrants cherish the value of choice and opportunity and the value of education more than 7th or 8th generation Americans.

Although I could read before I went to school, and I won the school reading prize at five years old, my early children's stories came from the radio and watching films at a cinema on Saturday mornings in Australia. It wasn't until I was nine years old on a ship returning from Australia that I was introduced to children's books.