These words gave me chills when I read them … and again when I re-read them. Delivered by Bill Moyers to the Council of Great City Schools on October 27, 2006.

Teach your kids they don’t have to accept what they have been handed. Teach them they are not only equal citizens under the law, but equal sons and daughters – heirs, everyone – of that revolution, and that it is their right to claim it as their own. Tompaine.com – Bill Moyers

He attacks the way we pitifully undervalue children and teachers (and suggests that, by doing so, we are devaluing our future and thereby dooming ourselves).

A nation that devalues poor children also demeans their teachers. For the life of me I cannot fathom why we expect so much from teachers and provide them so little in return … Yet teachers now are expected to staff the permanent emergency rooms of our country’s dysfunctional social order. They are expected to compensate for what families, communities, and culture fail to do. Tompaine.com – Bill Moyers

Please read the entire transcript. It’s worth your time.