A Quote by Bill Ayers

What was on the agenda was school and social life and those kinds of things. So I was the middle of five kids. So I had the great advantage of being able to play up to the older kids and play down to the younger kids and I think that's part of what propelled me to become a teacher at some point in my life. But it was a comfortable childhood. It was a privileged childhood.
I remember kids in high school and middle school who - I was kind of an insecure mess - I think there were those kids who really stepped out and paid attention to the kids that weren't as popular, and I see those kids as leaders.
I think it's important to let kids be kids and be cautious about accelerated sexuality as pressure to mature too quickly. My hackles go up when I see a teacher making kids feel like they are older, special, mature. Let kids be kids.
Everyone experiences bullying at some point - there are always older kids who think it's cool to pick on the younger kids.
Play is the best natural resource in a creative economy. Kids need more of it. It is the work of childhood. We hope to intrinsically change the opinion that play is not just a luxury but an absolute necessity for kids' lives.
Learning to read and write makes little sense if you don't understand what you're reading and writing about. While we may have forgotten, most of our early learning came not from being explicitly taught but from experiencing. Kids aren't born knowing hard and soft, sweet and sour, red and green. When the child experiences those things, s/he transforms them into psychological understandings. When kids play with other kids, they learn about others and about themselves. Learning the basics of our physical and social reality is what early childhood is all about.
What people don't realize I have put 160 kids through school. I had a gym full of children. Some of those kids slept in the gym. Some of those kids lived in the gyms. I went to those kids schools. I think with the training, I can't make a fighter have that passion that I have, and it takes years to develop a fighter.
Childhood is just this amazing place, and in my books, I was trying to express my concern about childhood being eroded. You have kids' TV programs being interrupted by terrorist attacks, and kids are exposed to so much these days.
Back when I was a kid, I never liked the kind of kids that my kids have become. They're privileged and have things very easy. But I'm proud of them. None of my kids are getting high, they love school, they're very popular.
In my family, I'm the middle of three, and I'm like a lot of middle children. I was one of those kids that floated from group to group. I liked being able to be included in all the groups - the bad kids, the smart kids.
Middle-class kids get to play, develop their thinking ability. Poor kids are much more likely to get regimentation under the guise of socialization. On top of it, we have huge segregation in early childhood programs. I don't see these patterns changing anytime soon, and that's a big obstacle.
New York rushed to get students into early childhood programs, but the research is clear that it has to be high quality. What we are giving poor kids now in early childhood is nothing like what we are giving middle-class kids in most places.
People say, 'Weren't you deprived of your childhood?' No way. I would not take anything back at all. Everything about it was great. I got to go places, meet people, play baseball against older kids and better competition. I had a great time.
In Brooklyn, the block wasn't very long or very wide, and not that many kids were out there, either. But when I got to Florida, there were a lot of kids on my block, young kids, older kids, and they could play outside until the sun went down and have fun.
Being able to build with my kids using my own Lego pieces that I've had for over 30 years combined with their new sets, that's really special. I can't think of anything else that was part of my childhood and now part of my parenthood.
We don't play golf often [with kids] because they don't play that much anymore - because their kids don't play. It's like anything else - fathers these days end up in the parks on the weekends and they have their kids into lacrosse or soccer or whatever it might be.
I had an older brother, an older sister and a younger brother, and though I look back fondly on my childhood, I think that when you've got four siblings sharing the same resources and a single kids' bathroom, it's going to get a little tense at times.
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