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What we need is a gigantic, messy community conversation about what is teaching and learning for the 21st century. We need to engage communities.

Bill Ayers

Art and activism can be symbiotic. They don’t have to be, of course; they can also be contradictory.
BILL AYERS

Activism Art Contradictory
I spoke at the University of Georgia, and a whole contingent of Tea Party people in Hell’s Angels regalia came in and sat in the front and scowled at me while I gave my talk.
BILL AYERS

Angel Government Party
One hundred years from now, we’ll all be dead. It’s hard to believe. One hundred years from now, everyone we see every day will be gone.
BILL AYERS

Believe Gone Years
I’m not disappointed in [Barack] Obama. He said who he is; he’s doing what he said he would do.
BILL AYERS

Barack Disappointed Said
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.
BILL AYERS

Childhood Kids Some Point Younger
Your body’s always going through changes. It’s fattening or thinning or wrinkling or blotching, and the only thing you really have control over is putting some decoration on it.
BILL AYERS

Body Changes Fattening Going Through
I more or less shared the view that life should be lived.
BILL AYERS

Less Shared Should Views
I voted for Obama and I was delighted that he’s been elected.
BILL AYERS

Country Delighted Elected President
I don’t think saying “I was wrong here, I was wrong there” absolves you of anything particularly, nor does it get you into heaven.
BILL AYERS

Absolves Heaven Thinking
People camped out at his house, and wondering who’s coming to visit, who’s going to be the Secretary of State – that all struck me as inane and stupid.
BILL AYERS

Insane People Stupid Wondering
I’m writing this book right now called Pallin’ Around, and the subtitle is: “Talking to the Tea Party.” And frankly I find talking to the Tea Party exhilarating, I love it.
BILL AYERS

Exhilarating Frankly Love Talking Writing
Lyndon Johnson who was the president who was executing that war, announced in the spring of 1968 that he would not seek the presidency again. He would go to Paris and end the war in Vietnam. Well we were ecstatic.
BILL AYERS

Country President Spring War
When [my dad] was at the University of Michigan, my mom was a social-worker. As he rose, he voted for [Adlai] Stevenson initially. Then he voted for [Dwight] Eisenhower. Then he kept voting Republican until he voted for Barack Obama.
BILL AYERS

Dad Mom Social Views Voted Worker
Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, once asked, “How shall we respond to the dreams of youth?” It is a dazzling and elegant question, a question that demands an answer–a range of answers, really, spiraling outward in widening circles.
BILL AYERS

Circles Dream House
One question is: Who is the working class today, and how has it changed? Where are we in that? I don’t have a knee-jerk kind of 1930s thing about we must build the unions and that’s the way to the future.
BILL AYERS

Book Party Writing
So that’s kind of amazing. But he was offered a cabinet post by Eisenhower in his second term. So he was moderate Republican. But if you asked him, he would’ve said, “I don’t have any politics. I’m a business person.” Mainstream, the American view, as he understood it.
BILL AYERS

Country Eisenhower Moderate Republican

What we need is a gigantic, messy community conversation about what is teaching and learning for the 21st century. We need to engage communities.

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Popular Authors

What we need is a gigantic, messy community conversation about what is teaching and learning for the 21st century. We need to engage communities.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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