I thought if anyone need a leg up it was our foster children. So I started getting involved in education reform and that was back in 1998. And as a result of all the reform work that I had done people urged me to run for the Minnesota state Senate. I did I was there for six years.

Excitement in education and student productivity the ability to get a result that you want from students go together and cannot be separated.

When I enrolled in college at age 19 I had a total of eight years of formal classroom education. As a result I was not comfortable with formal lectures and receiving regular homework assignments.

Racism cannot be cured solely by attacking some of the results it produces like discrimination in housing or in education.

Likewise education can direct people toward good or evil ends. When education is based on a fundamentally distorted worldview the results are horrific.

I tell students that the opportunities I had were a result of having a good educational background. Education is what allows you to stand out.

Common sense is in spite of not as the result of education.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

Learning is a result of listening which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words to learn from the child we must have empathy and empathy grows as we learn.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons or whether one wants to overturn them.