Quotes by Geoffrey Canada

About Geoffrey Canada:

Geoffrey Canada is an American educator, social activist and author. Since 1990, Canada has been president of the Harlem Children's Zone in Harlem, New York, an organization that states its goal is to increase high school and college graduation rates among students in Harlem. Canada serves as the chairman of Children's Defense Fund's board of directors. He was a member of the board of directors of The After-School Corporation, a nonprofit organization that aims to expand educational opportunities for all students.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The rates of soda consumption in our poorest communities cannot be explained by individual consumer preferences alone, but rather are linked to broader issues of access and affordability of healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods, and to the market...

Geoffrey Canada

My contract with my teachers is fair, and is two pages. The union contract is 200 pages. You cannot manage your business when you cannot make any decision without going back to 200 pages worth of stuff.

Geoffrey Canada

You grow up in America and you're told from day one, 'This is the land of opportunity.' That everybody has an equal chance to make it in this country. And then you look at places like Harlem, and you say, 'That is absolutely a lie.'

Geoffrey Canada

How is it we could have a system where schools could remain lousy for 50 years and yet you do exactly the same thing this year that they did 50 years ago when it didn't work then, and no one feels any pressure to change?

Geoffrey Canada

Convincing people to give your way a try will work if you neutralize - and sometimes you have to cauterize - the ones who really are against change. They're the kind of person who, if you tell them it's raining outside, they'll fight you tooth and na...

Geoffrey Canada

My own faith was nurtured by my grandmother and her clinging deeply to her faith when she was dying a painful and slow death from cancer.

Geoffrey Canada

Education is the only billion dollar industry that tolerates abject failure.

Geoffrey Canada

We've gotta guarantee all of our kids an education.

Geoffrey Canada

Middle-class families know education begins at birth.

Geoffrey Canada

I graduated from Bowdoin College and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Then I left and took a job teaching really poor inner-city white kids in Boston. It was interesting to me because I'd never been around poor whites before.

Geoffrey Canada

An extended school day gives administrators the ability to ensure children get a well-rounded education.

Geoffrey Canada

Many schools today are sacrificing social studies, the arts and physical education so children can cover basic subjects like math, English and science.

Geoffrey Canada

Good dental care doesn't make you a good student, but if your tooth hurts, it's hard to be a good student.

Geoffrey Canada

I want my kids to graduate from high school. But that's not enough. I also want them to go to college. Why? Because rich people's kids go to college. And if that's good enough for them, it's good enough for my kids. Because you know what? College gra...

Geoffrey Canada

People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 5...

Geoffrey Canada

I believe that for lots of churches and religious institutions, their main focus on the development of faith among parishioners needs to spread to the community.

Geoffrey Canada

Kids who are poor often have families that have not really been kept informed about... how important it is to read to your child, to reduce stresses in their life, to use positive incentives and words.

Geoffrey Canada

Poverty places not just one or two obstacles but multiple obstacles in a child's pathway to what we would consider to be regular development - cognitively, intellectually and emotionally.

Geoffrey Canada

At a school in Massachusetts where I once worked, we managed early on through consensus. Which sounds wonderful, but it was just a very, very difficult way to sort of manage anything, because convincing everybody to do one particular thing, especiall...

Geoffrey Canada

Teachers need to be paid like professionals.

Geoffrey Canada

Author Bio

  • NameGeoffrey Canada
  • DescriptionAmerican activist
  • BornJanuary 13, 1952
  • CountryUnited States Of America