American high school students trail teenagers from 14 European and Asian countries in reading math and science. We're even trailing France.

Like many students I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science.

We've heard from many teachers that they used episodes of Star Trek and concepts of Star Trek in their science classrooms in order to engage the students.

I suggest that the introductory courses in science at all levels from grade school through college be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals the so-called basics aside for a while and concentrate the attention of all students on the things that are not known.

NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve. It's sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people.

What students lack in school is an intellectual relationship or conversation with the teacher.

Having been an educator for so many years I know that all a good teacher can do is set a context raise questions or enter into a kind of a dialogic relationship with their students.

Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones gut this is only in part true.

Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen a lot of them will.

Crabbed and obscure definitions are of no use beyond a narrow circle of students of whom probably every one has a pet one of his own.

There are better ways we can transform this virulent hatred - by living our ideals the Peace Corps exchange students teachers exporting our music poetry blue jeans.

Ninety percent of the students take the 'preferred lender.' Why? Because that's the nature of the relationship. You trust the school. The school is in a position of authority.

The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean and the instruments are little or bigger islands very beautiful for the flowers and trees.

For some students school is the only place where they get a hot meal and a warm hug. Teachers are sometimes the only ones who tell our children they can go from an Indian reservation to the Ivy League from the home of a struggling single mom to the White House.

If we became students of Malcolm X we would not have young black men out there killing each other like they're killing each other now. Young black men would not be impregnating young black women at the rate going on now. We'd not have the drugs we have now or the alcoholism.

So I applied to medical school and received a scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis. Washington University turned out to be a lucky choice. The faculty was scholarly and dedicated and accessible to students.

Corporate governance is a huge issue too. We don't have women on these corporate boards. More than half of the students in law school are women more than half of the women I think in medical school now are women.

There have been some medical schools in which somewhere along the assembly line a faculty member has informed the students not so much by what he said but by what he did that there is an intimate relation between curing and caring.

The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality birth within marriage parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?

I've led a school whose faculty and students examine and discuss and debate every aspect of our law and legal system. And what I've learned most is that no one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. I've learned that we make progress by listening to each other across every apparent political or ideological divide.

Every year some 65 000 high school students - many of them star students and leaders in their communities - are unable to go to college or get a good job because they have no legal status.

Students who are interested in learning about the environment should not be dissuaded from doing so but only if they have proved their proficiency in other basic courses such as U.S. history. Until then we need to focus on producing well-educated citizens steeped in their country's history and mindful of their civic responsibilities.

The top experts in the world are ardent students. The day you stop learning you're definitely not an expert.

I tell students 'If you are learning from YouTube I almost don't want to teach you because what you learn from YouTube it takes 10 times as long to unlearn.' They do an approximation of the centre of the note an approximation of the interpretation a cloned version.