Parenting & Family Quote by Daniel Greenberg

Greenberg’s line has the quiet bite of someone describing a movement without using the word. He’s not selling a theory of learning so much as naming the conversion story that powers a certain kind of education reform: the moment adulthood and parenthood make your own schooling feel newly unforgivable. The phrasing “Quite a few, actually” is casual, even a little amused, as if he’s answering a question about who joins this work and discovering, again, how reliably personal history turns into civic ambition.

The subtext is that “poor educational experience” isn’t just about bad grades or underfunded classrooms. It’s about the deadening parts of school that many successful adults learned to tolerate, then later realize they don’t want their children to endure: humiliation masquerading as discipline, compliance treated as character, curiosity filed down for efficiency. Greenberg’s choice to put “enjoy school” at the end, as the desired outcome, is provocative in a culture that tends to treat enjoyment as an indulgence. He’s arguing, implicitly, that joy is not a bonus feature of education; it’s evidence that learning is happening on humane terms.

Context matters here: Greenberg is associated with democratic-school thinking, where student agency is central. The quote works because it reframes education work as a parental, moral response to lived experience, not an abstract policy debate. It’s less “Here’s my model,” more “We remember what it felt like, and we refuse to pass it on.”