There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education poverty and drugs. Two of them we talk about and one of them we don't.
These are important reforms. Infrastructure education health hospitals closing the gap with indigenous Australians. Also the Apology to the first Australians. As Prime Minister of the country I am proud of each and every one of these achievements.
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.
The gap in education in this country the unfairness of the schools is one of the great unfairness in this society.
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.
Higher education is one of few areas where this country competes with the rest of the world and wins. The best of American higher education outstrips any in the world. Look where the rest of the world goes for higher education for graduate degrees. They come here.
My mother was born on a tiny farm in County Mayo. She was meant to stay at home and look after the farm while her brother and sister got an education. However she came to England on a visit and never went back.
Unless children have strong education and strong families and strong communities and decent housing it's not enough to go sit in at a lunch counter.
Giving women education work the ability to control their own income inherit and own property benefits the society. If a woman is empowered her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper the village prospers and eventually so does the whole country.
To defend a country you need an army but to defend a civilization you need education.
To counter the avoidance of intellectual challenge and responsibility we must reduce the domination of certainty in education.
Without in any way minimising the economic and psychological blow that people experience when they lose their jobs the unemployed in affluent countries still have a safety net in the form of social security payments and usually free healthcare and free education for their children. They also have sanitation and safe drinking water.
A country like Belgium or socialist countries in central Europe spend more money on art education than the United States which is a really puzzling thought.
There are over 200 million illiterate women in India. This low literacy negatively impacts not just their lives but also their families' and the country's economic development. A girl's lack of education also has a negative impact on the health and well-being of her children.
Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.
Abraham Lincoln comes from nothing has no education no money lives in the middle of nowhere on the frontier. And despite the fact that he suffers one tragedy and one setback after another through sheer force of will he becomes something extraordinary: not only the president but the person who almost single-handedly united the country.