At a time when the average student is graduating from a four-year college $27,000 in debt, when hundreds of thousands of capable young people no longer see college as an option because of high costs and when the U.S. is falling further and further behind our economic competitors in terms of the percentage of young people graduating from college, no agreement should be passed which, over a period of years, makes a bad situation worse and will make college even less affordable than it is today.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the urgent need to address the rising costs of college education to ensure accessibility for future generations.
In this quote, Bernie Sanders highlights the financial burdens that students face when pursuing higher education, which is leading to a decline in college attendance among capable youth. He argues that any potential agreements or policies that could exacerbate this financial strain should be rejected, as they would further diminish the affordability of college and hinder the country's educational competitiveness on a global scale.
In practice
In a speech advocating for student loan reform, one could cite this quote to stress the importance of making college more affordable.
Do the elected officials in Washington stand with ordinary Americans - working families, children, the elderly, the poor - or will the extraordinary power of billionaire campaign contributors and Big Money prevail? The American people, by the millions, must send Congress the answer to that question.
In any democratic, civilized - even non-democratic nations, if you are a nation, it means to say that in our case, if there's a hurricane in Louisiana, the people of Vermont are there for them. If there's a tornado in the Midwest, we are there for them. If there's flooding in the East Coast, the people in California are there for us.
Who do you think controls the Republican Party? Big money controls the Republican Party. This is where their campaign contributions come from.
The deficit crisis is real and must be addressed. But it cannot be solved on the backs of the weak and vulnerable.
Let us wage a moral and political war against war itself, so that we can cut military spending and use that money for human needs.
We need an energy revolution by breaking our dependence on fossil fuels, polluting fuels... I am very, very confident our small state will lead this. We will be noticed by the country and the world.
Back when I was in school, few people understood dyslexia and what to do for it. My teachers thought I was lazy and not very clever, and I got bored easily... thinking of all the things I could do once I left school. I couldn't always follow what was going on.
We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.
Young cat! If you keep Your eyes open enough, Oh, the stuff you will learn! The most wonderful stuff!
I sat down in 1989 and I made up my mind at that point that I was going to spend the rest of my life assisting women and youth to gain social and political empowerment through business and education. I convinced myself economic empowerment of women was going to be key, especially in a country like this where most women didn't go to school.
There's so much talk of representation in politics and entertainment - it's everywhere - but I didn't realize representation was important until really my senior year of high school.
The things that have been most valuable to me I did not learn in school. Traditional education is based on facts and figures and passing tests - not on a comprehension of the material and its application to your life.
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