In praise of public schools

From Bangor, Maine, today:

I believe passionately in this grandiose undertaking that is so wildly American: the U.S. public school system. We were the first country to say, “Yes! We will educate everybody.” Implementation is imperfect, of course, and there is always work to do, but don’t you love the optimism of this giant, generous experiment? Americans have a history of aiming for impossibly high goals. Do we always reach them? Of course not. But isn’t it wonderful that we try?