Parents give birth; the Guru gives life. These life-givers are the soul of the magnificent building. The school building which the government can construct is like the body, but the teachers are the soul.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

Somewhere between the ages of eleven and fifteen, the average child begins to suffer from an atrophy, the paralysis of curiosity and the suspension of the power to observe. The trouble, I should judge, to lie with the schools.

I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was at the foot of the class.

It is not beyond our power to create a world in which all children have access to a good education. Those who do not believe this have small imaginations.

On the first day of school, my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name and said that from thenceforth that was the name we would answer to in school. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education.