"One of the things that I thought was really fun was um, one of the tasks was to compare the garbage collection system in Montreal and Cairo - which would be a lot of fun if you had a clue where Cairo was. It's that type of thing that doesn't seem to translate into our particular environment. But it's a great idea on paper."

"I think there has to be some experience first on which to base the opinion you can't just ask somebody before you start "what do you want to do? - They don't know."

"I think there's a bit of a danger too in assigning a mark or a credit to everything, because then people will only do things if they are getting rewarded, in life there's gotta be something you do just because it's fun, because it engages you, because you want to do it."

"So I think that is, if you get there, if you get to the point where kids are reading because they want to, not because they're made to, if they have curiosity not because they're made to look into things but because they want to, the battles won."

"See this is where we get to my own philosophy perhaps not being completely in touch with the received wisdom. I would like to think that the school system is based on education, but at heart I think it's more of a socialization process. "