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When I went to school, you had to take art, you had to play an instrument. You had to play an instrument. But it's all degraded since then. I do not know what kind of nation we are that is cutting art, music, and gym out of the public-school curriculum.

But for the children of the poorest people we're stripping the curriculum, removing the arts and music, and drilling the children into useful labor. We're not valuing a child for the time in which she actually is a child.

Keeping our kids engaged and in school must become a national priority.

We need to prepare our kids for a 21st Century economy, and we're not doing it with our schools.

All around the United States of America - in the cities and the counties - our public education is suffering and has been suffering. Cuts, cuts, cuts.

You know, we have a fiscal train wreck before us. And unless we act, and act deliberately, we're not going to enable our kids to have what we have. It's plain and simple as that.

I take my kids to school. It's what keeps you normal.

Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

I've cut down on a lot of stuff this summer, just so I can hang out and be a normal kid for a while.

This is the other thing: we make the cost of raising kids higher than it has to be just because we feel they need all this stuff, like gadgets, certain schools, and activities that are nice but aren't really necessary.