If freedom makes social progress possible, so social progress strengthens and enlarges freedom. The two are inseparable partners in the great adventure of humanity.
It is one thing to open the schools to all children regardless of race. It is another to train the teachers, to build the classrooms, and to attempt to eliminate the effects of past educational deficiencies. It is still another to find ways to feed the incentive to learn and keep children in school.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Opening schools to all is not enough; comprehensive measures are needed to ensure quality education for every child.
This quote by Robert Kennedy highlights the complexities involved in achieving true educational equality. Merely allowing all children access to schools is insufficient; it is crucial to focus on training teachers, improving infrastructure, addressing historical inequities, and fostering a learning environment that incentivizes student participation and retention. Educational reform requires a multifaceted approach to truly empower all students.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a school board meeting discussing funding for teacher training, one might quote Kennedy to emphasize the need for comprehensive educational reform.
More from Robert Kennedy
All quotes →Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.
Within the United States, we have put great emphasis upon political freedoms. Because it has been our experience that these freedoms can lead to others.
It is one thing to open job opportunities. It is another to train people to fill them, or to persuade American enterprise to seek Negro as well as white applicants.
Our attitude towards immigration reflects our faith in the American ideal. We have always believed it possible for men and women who start at the bottom to rise as far as the talent and energy allow. Neither race nor place of birth should affect their chances.
The Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America - except whether we are proud to be Americans.
Similar quotes
The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose. Occasionally some students do arrive for an education but rote and mechanical nature of the institution soon converts them to a less idealic attitude
Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.
Good history is good story-telling. And good story-telling demands empathy; it requires understanding different actors, differing motivations, competing goals.
In many professions, what used to matter most were abilities associated with the left side of the brain: linear, sequential, spreadsheet kind of faculties. Those still matter, but they're not enough.
Every form of true education trains the student in self-reliance
The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.