An arts education helps build academic skills and increase academic performance while also providing alternative opportunities to reward the skills of children who learn differently.

My mother is a professor of early childhood education. When I was two she would say she knew I was going to be an actor.

Economic prosperity and quality education for our children are inexorably linked.

What makes me angry? The education of children. How in God's name can you expect to have a functioning society the way we teach our kids?

Although children are only 24 percent of the population they're 100 percent of our future and we cannot afford to provide any child with a substandard education.

My wife wanted my children to have some Chinese culture and education. She believes the children need to learn two languages and two cultures.

A lot of children like I did move away from words because of the fear - which is something you have to take out of education: the fear of worrying about what marks you'll get detention worrying about letting people down your parents teachers.

Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children's right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future.

I'm sure I am impatient sometimes. I sure do get angry sometimes. I think it's outrageous how hard it is to get this country to feed its children and to take care of its children to give them a decent education.

The government has convinced parents that at some point it's no longer their responsibility. And in fact they force them in many respects to turn their children over to the public education system and wrest control from them and block them out of participation of that. That has to change or education will not improve in this country.